IE-PLAIN  MAN 


AND  HIS -WIFE 


ARNOLD    BENNETT 


UC-NRLF 


B    3    33M    30? 


THE  PLAIN  MAN  AND  HIS  WIFE 


BY     ARNOLD      BENNETT 


NOVELS 

The  Old  Adam 

The  Old  Wives'  Tale 

Helen  with  the  High  Hand 

The  Matador  of  the  Five  Towns 

The  Book  of  Carlotta 

Buried  Alive 

The  Grand  Babylon  Hotel 

A  Great  Man 

Leonora 

Whom  God  Hath  Joined 

Hugo 

A  Man  from  the  North 

Anna  of  the  Five  Towns 

The  Glimpse 

POCKET  PHILOSOPHIES 

The  Plain  Man  and  His  Wife 
How  to  Live  on  24  Hours  a  Day 
The  Human  Machine 
Literary  Taste 
Mental  Efficiency 

PLAYS 

The  Great  Adventure 
Cupid  and  Commonsense 
What  the  Public  Wants 
Polite  Farces 
Milestones 
The  Honeymoon 

MISCELLANEOUS 

Paris  Nights 

The  Truth  About  an  Author 

The  Feast  of  St.  Friend 


GEORGE  H.  DORAN  COMPANY 
NEW  YORK 


THE  PLAIN  MAN 
AND    HIS    WIFE 


By    ARNOLD    BENNETT 

AUTHOR  OF  "THB  OLD  ADAM,"  "  THB  OLD  WIVES*  TALB." 
"BURIED  ALIVB."  BTC. 


NEW  YORK 
GEORGE  H.  DORAN  COMPANY 


Copyright,  1913, 
By  George  H.  Doran  Company 


RA 


CONTENTS 

Page 

I.    All  Means  and  No  End 9 

II.     The  Taste  for  Pleasure 33 

III.  The  Risks  of  Life 60 

IV.  In  Her  Place 87 


28:1.446 


THE  PLAIN  MAN  AND  HIS  WIFE 


I 

ALL  MEANS  AND  NO  END 


THE  plain  man  on  a  plain  day  wakes  up, 
slowly  or  quickly  according  to  his  tem- 
perament,   and    greets    the    day    in    a 
mental  posture  which  might  be  thus  expressed 
1  words: 

"Oh,  Lord!  Another  day!  What  a  grind!" 
If  you  ask  me  whom  I  mean  by  the  plain  man, 
my  reply  is  that  I  mean  almost  every  man.  I 
mean  you.  I  certainly  mean  me.  I  mean 
the  rich  and  the  poor,  the  successful  and 
the  unsuccessful,  the  idle  and  the  diligent,  the 
luxurious  and  the  austere.  For,  what  with  the 
limits  of  digestion,  the  practical  impossibility  of 
wearing  two  neckties  at  once,  the  insecurity  of  in- 
vestments, the  responsibilities  of  wealth  and  of 
success,  the  exhaustingness  of  the  search 
for  pleasure,  and  the  cheapness  of  travel 
—  the  real  differences  between  one  sort  of  plain 
man  and  another  are  slight  in  these  times.  (And 
indeed  they  always  were  slight.) 

9 


io    THE  PLAIN  MAN  AND  HIS  WIFE 

The  plain  man  has  a  lot  to  do  before  he  may 
have  his  breakfast  —  and  he  must  do  it.  The  ty- 
rannic routine  begins  instantly  he  is  out  of  bed. 
To  lave  limbs,  to  shave  the  jaw,  to  select  clothes 
and  assume  them  —  these  things  are  naught.  He 
must  exercise  his  muscles  —  all  his  muscles 
equally  and  scientifically  —  with  the  aid  of  a 
text-book  and  of  diagrams  on  a  large  card ;  which 
card  he  often  hides  if  he  is  expecting  visitors  in 
his  chamber,  for  he  will  not  always  confess  to 
these  exercises;  he  would  have  you  believe  that 
he  alone,  in  a  world  of  simpletons,  is  above  the 
faddism  of  the  hour;  he  is  as  ashamed  of  these 
exercises  as  of  a  good  resolution,  and  when  his 
wife  happens  to  burst  in  on  them  he  will  pretend 
to  be  doing  some  common  act,  such  as  walking 
across  the  room  or  examining  a  mole  in  the 
small  of  his  back.  And  yet  he  will  not  abandon 
them.  They  have  an  empire  over  him.  To  drop 
them  would  be  to  be  craven,  inefficient.  The 
text-book  asserts  that  they  will  form  one  of 
the  pleasantest  parts  of  the  day,  and  that  he  will 
learn  to  look  forward  to  them.  He  soon  learns 
to  look  forward  to  them,  but  not  with  glee.  He 
is  relieved  and  proud  when  they  are  over  for 
the  day. 


ALL  MEANS  AND  NO  END         n 

He  would  enjoy  his  breakfast,  thanks  to  the 
strenuous  imitation  of  diagrams,  were  it  not  that, 
in  addition  to  being  generally  in  a  hurry,  he  is 
preoccupied.  He  is  preoccupied  by  the  sense  of 
doom,  by  the  sense  that  he  has  set  out  on  the 
appointed  path  and  dare  not  stray  from  it.  The 
train  or  the  tram-car  or  the  automobile  (same 
thing)  is  waiting  for  him,  irrevocable,  undeniable, 
inevitable.  He  wrenches  himself  away.  He 
goes  forth  to  his  fate,  as  to  the  dentist.  And 
just  as  he  would  enjoy  his  breakfast  in  the  home, 
so  he  would  enjoy  his  newspaper  and  cigarette 
in  the  vehicle,  were  it  not  for  that  ever-present 
sense  of  doom.  The  idea  of  business  grips  him. 
It  matters  not  what  the  business  is.  Business  is 
everything,  and  everything  is  business.  He 
reaches  his  office  —  whatever  his  office  is.  He 
is  in  his  office.  He  must  plunge  —  he  plunges. 
The  day  has  genuinely  begun  now.  The  ap- 
pointed path  stretches  straight  in  front  of  him, 
for  five,  six,  seven,  eight  hours. 

Oh!  but  he  chose  his  vocation.  He  likes  it. 
It  satisfies  his  instincts.  It  is  his  life.  (So  you 
say.)  Well,  does  he  like  it?  Does  it  satisfy  his 
instincts?  Is  it  his  life?  If  truly  the  answer  is 
affirmative,  he  is  at  any  rate  not  conscious  of  the 


12     THE  PLAIN  MAN  AND  HIS  WIFE 

fact.  He  is  aware  of  no  ecstasy.  What  is  the 
use  of  being  happy  unless  he  knows  he  is  happy? 
Some  men  know  that  they  are  happy,  in  the  hours 
of  business,  but  they  are  few.  The  majority  are 
not,  and  the  bulk  of  the  majority  do  not  even 
pretend  to  be.  The  whole  attitude  of  the  average 
plain  man  to  business  implies  that  business  is  a 
nuisance,  scarcely  mitigated.  With  what  secret 
satisfaction  he  anticipates  that  visit  to  the 
barber's  in  the  middle  of  the  morning!  With 
what  gusto  he  hails  the  arrival  of  an  unexpected 
interrupting  friend !  With  what  easement  he  de- 
cides that  he  may  lawfully  put  off  some  task  till 
the  morrow!  Let  him  hear  a  band  or  a  fire- 
engine  in  the  street,  and  he  will  go  to  the  window 
with  the  eagerness  of  a  child  or  of  a  girl-clerk. 
If  he  were  working  at  golf  the  bands  of  all  the 
regiments  of  Hohenzollern  would  not  make  him 
turn  his  head,  nor  the  multitudinous  blazing  of 
fireproof  skyscrapers.  No!  Let  us  be  honest. 
Business  constitutes  the  steepest,  roughest  league 
of  the  appointed  path.  Were  it  otherwise,  busi- 
ness would  not  be  universally  regarded  as  a 
means  to  an  end. 

Moreover,    when    the    plain    man    gets    home 
again,  does   his  wife's  face  say  to  him :     "  I  know 


ALL  MEANS  AND  NO  END         13 

that  your  real  life  is  now  over  for  the  day,  and 
I  regret  for  your  sake  that  you  have  to  return 
here.  I  know  that  the  powerful  interest  of 
your  life  is  gone.  But  I  am  glad  that  you  have 
had  five,  six,  seven,  or  eight  hours  of  passionate 
pleasure"?  Not  a  bit!  His  wife's  face  says  to 
him :  "  I  commiserate  with  you  on  all  that  you 
have  been  through.  It  is  a  great  shame  that  you 
should  be  compelled  to  toil  thus  painfully.  But 
I  will  try  to  make  it  up  to  you.  I  will  soothe 
you.  I  will  humour  you.  Forget  anxiety  and 
fatigue  in  my  smiles.',  She  does  not  fetch  his 
comfortable  slippers  for  him,  partly  because,  in 
this  century,  wives  do  not  do  such  things,  and 
partly  because  comfortable  slippers  are  no  longer 
worn.  But  she  does  the  equivalent  —  whatever 
the  equivalent  may  happen  to  be  in  that  particular 
household.  And  he  expects  the  commiseration 
and  the  solace  in  her  face.  He  would  be  very 
hurt  did  he  not  find  it  there. 

And  even  yet  he  is  not  relaxed.  Even  yet  the 
appointed  path  stretches  inexorably  in  front,  and 
he  cannot  wander.  For  now  he  feels  the  cogs  and 
cranks  of  the  highly  complex  domestic  machine. 
At  breakfast  he  declined  to  hear  them ;  they  were 
shut  off  from  him ;  he  was  too  busy  to  be  bothered 


i4    THE  PLAIN  MAN  AND  HIS  WIFE 

with  them.  At  evening  he  must  be  bothered  with 
them.  Was  it  not  he  who  created  the  machine? 
He  discovers,  often  to  his  astonishment,  that  his 
wife  has  an  existence  of  her  own,  full  of  factors 
foreign  to  him,  and  he  has  to  project  himself,  not 
only  into  his  wife's  existence,  but  into  the  ex- 
istences of  other  minor  personages.  His  daugh- 
ter, for  example,  will  persist  in  growing  up. 
Not  for  a  single  day  will  she  pause.  He  arrives 
one  night  and  perceives  that  she  is  a  woman  and 
that  he  must  treat  her  as  a  woman.  He  had  not 
bargained  for  this.  Peace,  ease,  relaxation  in  a 
home  vibrating  to  the  whir  of  such  astounding 
phenomena?  Impossible  dream!  These  phe- 
nomena were  originally  meant  by  him  to  be  the 
ornamentation  of  his  career,  but  they  are  threat- 
ening to  be  the  sole  reason  of  his  career.  If  his 
wife  lives  for  him,  it  is  certain  that  he  lives 
just  as  much  for  his  wife;  and  as  for  his  daugh- 
ter, while  she  emphatically  does  not  live  for  him, 
he  is  bound  to  admit  that  he  has  just  got  to  live 
for  her  —  and  she  knows  it ! 

To  gain  money  was  exhausting;  to  spend  it  is 
precisely  as  exhausting.  He  cannot  quit  the  ap- 
pointed path  nor  lift  the  doom.  Dinner  is 
finished  ere  he  has  begun  to  recover  from  the 


ALL  MEANS  AND  NO  END         15 

varied  shock  of  home.  Then  his  daughter  may 
negligently  throw  him  a  few  moments  of  charm- 
ing cajolery.  He  may  gossip  in  simple  idleness 
with  his  wife.  He  may  gambol  like  any  infant 
with  the  dog.  A  yawn.  The  shadow  of  the  next 
day  is  upon  him.  He  must  not  stay  up  too  late, 
lest  the  vigour  demanded  by  the  next  day  should 
be  impaired.  Besides,  he  does  not  want  to  stay 
up.  Naught  is  quite  interesting  enough  to  keep 
him  up.  And  bed,  too,  is  part  of  the  appointed, 
unescapable  path.  To  bed  he  goes,  carrying  ten 
million  preoccupations.  And  of  his  state  of  mind 
the  kindest  that  can  be  said  is  that  he  is 
philosophic  enough  to  hope  for  the  best. 

And  after  the  night  he  wakes  up,  slowly  or 
quickly  according  to  his  temperament,  and  greets 
the  day  with: 

"Oh,  Lord!     Another  day!     What  a  grind!" 


16     THE  PLAIN  MAN  AND  HIS  WIFE 


II 

The  interesting  point  about  the  whole  situa- 
tion is  that  the  plain  man  seldom  or  never  asks 
himself  a  really  fundamental  question  about 
that  appointed  path  of  his  —  that  path  from 
which  he  dare  not  and  could  not  wander. 

Once,  perhaps  in  a  parable,  the  plain  man 
travelling  met  another  traveller.  And  the  plain 
man  demanded  of  the  traveller: 

"Where  are  you  going  to?" 

The  traveller  replied: 

"  Now  I  come  to  think  of  it,  I  don't  know." 

The  plain  man  was  ruffled  by  this  insensate 
answer.     He  said: 

"But  you  are  travelling?" 

The  traveller  replied : 

"  Yes." 

The  plain  man,  beginning  to  be  annoyed,  said: 

"  Have  you  never  asked  yourself  where  you 
are  going  to?  " 

"  I  have  not." 


ALL  MEANS  AND  NO  END         17 

"  But  do  you  mean  to  tell  me,"  protested  the 
plain  man,  now  irritated,  "  that  you  are  putting 
yourself  to  all  this  trouble,  peril,  and  expense  of 
trains  and  steamers,  without  having  asked  your- 
self where  you  are  going  to?  " 

"  It  never  occurred  to  me,"  the  traveller  ad- 
mitted.    "  I  just  had  to  start  and  I  started." 

Whereupon  the  plain  man  was,  as  too  often 
with  us  plain  men,  staggered  and  deeply  affronted 
by  the  illogical  absurdity  of  human  nature. 
"  Was  it  conceivable,"  he  thought,  "  that  this 
traveller,  presumably  in  his  senses — "  etc. 
(You  are  familiar  with  the  tone  and  the  style, 
being  a  plain  man  yourself.)  And  he  gave  way 
to  moral  indignation. 

Now  I  must  here,  in  parenthesis,  firmly  state 
that  I  happen  to  be  a  member  of  the  Society  for 
the  Suppression  of  Moral  Indignation.  As  such, 
I  object  to  the  plain  man's  moral  indignation 
against  the  traveller ;  and  I  think  that  a  liability 
to  moral  indignation  is  one  of  the  plain  man's 
most  serious  defects.  As  such,  my  endeavour 
is  to  avoid  being  staggered  and  deeply  affronted, 
or  even  surprised,  by  human  vagaries.  There 
are  too  many  plain  people  who  are  always  re- 


18    THE  PLAIN  MAN  AND  HIS  WIFE 

discovering  human  nature  —  its  turpitudes, 
fatuities,  unreason.  They  live  amid  human  na- 
ture as  in  a  chamber  of  horrors.  And  yet,  after 
all  these  years,  we  surely  ought  to  have  grown 
used  to  human  nature !  It  may  be  extremely  vile 
—  that  is  not  the  point.  The  point  is  that  it 
constitutes  our  environment,  from  which  we  can- 
not escape  alive.  The  man  who  is  capable  of  be- 
ing deeply  affronted  by  his  inevitable  environ- 
ment ought  to  have  the  pluck  of  his  convictions 
and  shoot  himself.  The  Society  would  with 
pleasure  pay  his  funeral  expenses  and  contribute 
to  the  support  of  his  wife  and  children.  Such 
a  man  is,  without  knowing  it,  a  dire  enemy  of 
true  progress,  which  can  only  be  planned  and 
executed  in  an  atmosphere  from  which  heated 
moral  superiority  is  absent. 

I  offer  these  parenthetical  remarks  as  a  guaran- 
tee that  I  shall  not  over-righteously  sneer  at  the 
plain  man  for  his  share  in  the  sequel  to  the  con- 
versation with  the  traveller.  For  there  was  a 
sequel  to  the  conversation. 

"  As  questions  are  being  asked,  where  are  you 
going  to?"  said  the  traveller. 

The  plain  man  answered  with  assurance: 


ALL  MEANS  AND  NO  END         19 

"  Oh,  I  know  exactly  where  I'm  going  to.  I'm 
going  to  Timbuctoo." 

"  Indeed !  "  said  the  traveller.  "  And  why  are 
you  going  to  Timbuctoo?" 

Said  the  plain  man :  "  I'm  going  because  it's 
the  proper  place  to  go  to.  Every  self-respecting 
person  goes  to  Timbuctoo." 

"But  why?" 

Said  the  plain  man: 

"  Well,  it's  supposed  to  be  just  about  unique. 
You're  contented  there.  You  get  what  you've 
always  wanted.     The  climate's  wonderful." 

"  Indeed !"  said  the  traveller  again.  "Have 
you  met  anybody  who's  been  there?  " 

"  Yes,  I've  met  several.  I've  met  a  lot.  And 
I've  heard  from  people  who  are  there." 

"  And  are  their  reports  enthusiastic?  " 

"  Well  — -"     The  plain  man  hesitated. 

"  Answer  me.  Are  their  reports  enthusiastic?  " 
the  traveller  insisted,  rather  bullyingly. 

"  Not  very,"  the  plain  man  admitted.  "  Some 
say  it's  very  disappointing.  And  some  say  it's 
much  like  other  towns.  Every  one  says  the 
climate  has  grave  drawbacks." 

The  traveller  demanded : 


20    THE  PLAIN  MAN  AND  HIS  WIFE 

"  Then  why  are  you  going  there?  " 

Said  the  plain  man: 

"  It  never  occurred  to  me  to  ask  why.  As  I 
say,  Timbuctoo's  supposed  to  be  — " 

"Supposed  by  whom?" 

"  Well  —  generally  supposed,"  said  the  plain 
man,  limply. 

"Not  by  the  people  who've  been  there?"  the 
traveller  persevered,  with  obstinacy. 

"  Perhaps  not,"  breathed  the  plain  man. 
"  But  it's  generally  supposed  — "     He  faltered. 

There  was  a  silence,  which  was  broken  by  the 
traveller,  who  inquired: 

"Any  interesting  places  en  route?" 

"  I  don't  know.  I  never  troubled  about  that," 
said  the  plain  man. 

"  But  do  you  mean  to  tell  me,"  the  traveller 
exclaimed,  "  that  you  are  putting  yourself  to  all 
this  trouble,  peril,  and  expense  of  trains  and 
steamers  and  camel-back  without  having  asked 
yourself  why,  and  without  having  satisfied  your- 
self that  the  thing  was  worth  while,  and  with- 
out having  even  ascertained  the  most  agreeable 
route?" 

Said  the  plain  man,  weakly: 


ALL  MEANS  AND  NO  END         21 

"  I  just  had  to  start  for  somewhere,  so  I 
started  for  Timbuctoo." 

Said  the  traveller : 

"  Well,  I'm  of  a  forgiving  disposition. 
Shake  hands." 


22    THE  PLAIN  MAN  AND  HIS  WIFE 


III 

The  two  individuals  in  the  foregoing  parable 
were  worrying  each  other  with  fundamental  ques- 
tions. And  what  makes  the  parable  unrealistic  is 
the  improbability  of  real  individuals  ever  doing 
any  such  thing.  If  the  plain  man,  for  instance, 
has  almost  ceased  to  deal  in  fundamental  ques- 
tions in  these  days,  the  reason  is  not  difficult  to 
find.  The  reason  lies  in  the  modern  perception 
that  fundamental  questions  are  getting  very  hard 
to  answer.  In  a  former  time  a  dogmatic  answer 
was  ready  waiting  for  every  fundamental  ques- 
tion. You  asked  the  question,  but  before  you 
asked  it  you  knew  the  answer,  and  so  there  was 
no  argument  and  nearly  no  anxiety.  In  that 
former  time  a  mere  child  could  glance  at  your 
conduct  and  tell  you  with  certainty  exactly  what 
you  would  be  doing  and  how  you  would  be 
feeling  ten  thousand  years  hence,  if  you  persisted 
in  the  said  conduct.  But  knowledge  has  ad- 
vanced   since    then,    and    the    inconvenience    of 


ALL  MEANS  AND  NO  END         23 

increased  knowledge  is  that  it  intensifies 
the  sense  of  ignorance,  with  the  result 
that,  though  we  know  immensely  more  than  our 
grandfathers  knew,  we  feel  immensely  more  ig- 
norant than  they  ever  felt.  They  were,  indeed, 
too  ignorant  to  be  aware  of  ignorance  —  which  is 
perhaps  a  comfortable  state.  Thus  the  plain  man 
nowadays  shirks  fundamental  questions.  And  as- 
suredly no  member  of  the  Society  for  the  Sup- 
pression of  Moral  Indignation  shall  blame  him. 

All  fundamental  questions  resolve  themselves 
finally  into  the  following  assertion  and  inquiry 
about  life :  "  I  am  now  engaged  in  something 
rather  tiresome.  What  do  I  stand  to  gain  by  it 
later  on?"  That  is  the  basic  query.  It  has 
forms  of  varying  importance.  In  its  supreme 
form  the  word  "  eternity  "  has  to  be  employed. 
And  the  plain  man  is,  to-day,  so  sensitive  about 
this  supreme  form  of  the  question  that,  far 
from  asking  and  trying  to  answer  it,  he  can 
scarcely  bear  to  hear  it  even  discussed  —  I  mean 
discussed  with  candour.  In  practise  a  frank  dis- 
cussion of  it  usually  tempts  him  to  exhibitions  of 
extraordinary  heat  and  bitterness,  and  wisdom 
is  thereby  but  obscured.  Therefore  he  prefers 
the  disadvantage  of  leaving  it  alone  to  the  dis- 


24  THE  PLAIN  MAN  AND  HIS  WIFE 
satisfaction  of  attempting  to  deal  with  it.  The 
disadvantage  of  leaving  it  alone  is  obvious.  Ex- 
istence is,  and  must  be,  a  compromise  between  the 
claims  of  the  moment  and  the  claims  of  the 
future  —  and  how  can  that  compromise  be  wisely 
established  if  one  has  not  somehow  made  up 
one's  mind  about  the  future?  It  cannot.  But 
—  I  repeat  —  I  would  not  blame  the  plain  man. 
I  would  only  just  hint  to  him,  while  respecting 
his  sensitiveness,  that  the  present  hour  is  just 
as  much  a  part  of  eternity  as  another  hour  ten 
thousand  years  off. 

The  second  —  the  most  important  —  form  of 
the  fundamental  question  embraces  the  problem 
of  old  age.  All  plain  men  will  admit,  when 
faithfully  cross-examined,  a  sort  of  belief  that 
they  are  on  their  way  to  some  Timbuctoo  situate 
in  the  region  of  old  age.  It  may  be  the  Tim- 
buctoo of  a  special  ambition  realized,  or  the  Tim- 
buctoo of  luxury,  or  the  Timbuctoo  of  material 
security,  or  the  Timbuctoo  of  hale  health,  or  the 
Timbuctoo  of  knowledge,  or  the  Timbuctoo  of 
power,  or  even  the  Timbuctoo  of  a  good  con- 
science. It  is  anyhow  a  recognizable  and  defin- 
able Timbuctoo.     And  the  path  leading  to  it  is 


ALL  MEANS  AND  NO  END        25 

a  straight,  wide  thoroughfare,  clearly  visible  for 
a  long  distance  ahead. 

The  theory  of  the  mortal  journey  is  simple 
and  seldom  challenged.  It  is  a  twofold  theory 
—  first  that  the  delight  of  achievement  will  com- 
pensate for  the  rigours  and  self-denials  of  the 
route,  and  second  that  the  misery  of  non- 
achievement  would  outweigh  the  immediate 
pleasures  of  dallying.  If  this  theory  were  not 
indestructible,  for  reasons  connected  with  the 
secret  nature  of  humanity,  it  would  probably 
have  been  destroyed  long  ago  by  the  mere  cumu- 
lative battering  of  experience.  For  the  earth's 
surface  is  everywhere  thickly  dotted  with  old 
men  who  have  achieved  ambition,  old  men 
drenched  in  luxury,  old  men  as  safe  as  Mont 
Blanc  from  overthrow,  old  men  with  the  health 
of  camels,  old  men  who  know  more  than  any- 
body ever  knew  before,  old  men  whose  nod  can 
ruin  a  thousand  miles  of  railroad,  and  old  men 
with  consciences  of  pure  snow;  but  who  are  not 
happy  and  cannot  enjoy  life. 

The  theory,  however,  does  happen  to  be  in- 
destructible, partly  because  old  age  is  such  a 
terrible  long  way  off,  partly  because  the  young 


26    THE  PLAIN  MAN  AND  HIS  WIFE 

honestly  believe  themselves  to  have  a  monopoly 
of  wisdom,  partly  because  every  plain  man  is 
convinced  that  his  case  will  be  different  from 
all  the  other  cases,  and  chiefly  because  endeavour 
—  not  any  particular  endeavour,  but  rather  any 
endeavour !  —  is  a  habit  that  corresponds  to  a 
very  profound  instinct  in  the  plain  man.  So  the 
reputation  of  Timbuctoo  as  a  pleasure  resort  re- 
mains entirely  unimpaired,  and  the  pilgrimages 
continue  with  unabated  earnestness. 

And  there  is  another  and  a  paramount  reason 
why  the  pilgrimages  should  continue.  The  two 
men  in  the  parable  both  said  that  they  just  had 
to  start  —  and  they  were  right.  We  have 
to  start,  and,  once  started,  we  have  to  keep  go- 
ing. We  must  go  somewhere.  And  at  the  mo- 
ment of  starting  we  have  neither  the  sagacity 
nor  the  leisure  to  invent  fresh  places  to  start  for, 
or  to  cut  new  paths.  Everybody  is  going  to 
Timbuctoo ;  the  roads  are  well  marked.  And  the 
plain  man,  with  his  honour  of  being  peculiar,  sets 
out  for  Timbuctoo  also,  following  the  signposts. 
The  fear  of  not  arriving  keeps  him  on  the  trot,  the 
fear  of  the  unknown  keeps  him  in  the  middle  of 
the  road  and  out  of  the  forest  on  either  side  of 
it,  and  hope  keeps  up  his  courage. 


ALL  MEANS  AND  NO  END        27 

Will  any  member  of  the  Society  for  the  Sup- 
pression of  Moral  Indignation  step  forward  and 
heatedly  charge  the  plain  man  with  culpable 
foolishness,  ignorance,  or  gullibility;  or  even 
with  cowardice  in  neglecting  to  find  a  convincing 
answer  to  the  fundamental  question  about  the 
other  end  of  his  life? 


28    THE  PLAIN  MAN  AND  HIS  WIFE 


IV 

There  is,  however,  a  third  form  of  the 
fundamental  question  which  is  less  unanswer- 
able than  the  two  forms  already  mentioned. 
The  plain  man  may  be  excused  for  his  re- 
markable indifference  as  to  what  his  labour 
and  his  tedium  will  gain  for  him  "  later  on," 
when  "  later  on "  means  beyond  the  grave  or 
thirty  years  hence.  But  we  live  also  in  the  pres- 
ent, and  if  proper  existence  is  a  compromise  be- 
tween the  claims  of  the  present  and  the  claims  of 
the  future  the  present  must  be  considered,  and  the 
plain  man  ought  surely  to  ask  himself  the  funda- 
mental question  in  such  a  form  as  the  following: 
"  I  am  now  —  this  morning  —  engaged  in  some- 
thing rather  tiresome.  What  do  I  stand  to  gain 
by  it  this  evening,  to-morrow,  this  week  —  next 
week?  "  In  this  form  the  fundamental  question, 
once  put,  can  be  immediately  answered  by  experi- 
ence and  by  experiment. 


ALL  MEANS  AND  NO  END  29 
But  does  the  plain  man  put  it?  I  mean  — 
does  he  put  it  seriously  and  effectively?  I  think 
that  very  often,  if  not  as  a  general  rule,  he  does 
not.  He  may  —  in  fact  he  does  —  gloomily  and 
savagely  mutter :  "  What  pleasure  do  I  get  out 
of  life?"  But  he  fails  to  insist  on  a  clear  an- 
swer from  himself,  and  even  if  he  obtains  a  clear 
answer  —  even  if  he  makes  the  candid  admission, 
"  No  pleasure,"  or  "  Not  enough  pleasure  " — 
even  then  he  usually  does  not  insist  on  modify- 
ing his  life  in  accordance  with  the  answer.  He 
goes  on  ignoring  all  the  interesting  towns  and 
oases  on  the  way  to  his  Timbuctoo.  Excessively 
uncertain  about  future  joy,  and  too  breathlessly 
preoccupied  to  think  about  joy  in  the  present,  he 
just  drives  obstinately  ahead,  rather  like  a  per- 
son in  a  trance.  Singular  conduct  for  a  plain 
man  priding  himself  on  common  sense! 

For  the  case  of  the  plain  man,  conscientious 
and  able,  can  only  too  frequently  be  summed  up 
thus:  Faced  with  the  problem  of  existence, 
which  is  the  problem  of  combining  the  largest 
possible  amount  of  present  satisfaction  with 
the  largest  possible  amount  of  security  in 
the  future,  he  has  educated  himself  generally, 
and  he  has  educated  himself  specially  for  a  par- 


3o    THE  PLAIN  MAN  AND  HIS  WIFE 

ticular  profession  or  trade;  he  has  adopted  the 
profession  or  trade,  with  all  its  risks  and  re- 
sponsibilities —  risks  and  responsibilities  which 
often  involve  the  felicity  of  others ;  he  has  bound 
himself  to  it  for  life,  almost  irrevocably;  he 
labours  for  it  so  many  hours  a  day,  and  it  oc- 
cupies his  thoughts  for  so  many  hours  more. 
Further,  in  the  quest  of  satisfaction,  he  has  taken 
a  woman  to  wife  and  has  had  children.  And 
here  it  is  well  to  note  frankly  that  his  prime  ob- 
ject in  marrying  was  not  the  woman's  happiness, 
but  his  own,  and  that  the  children  came,  not  in 
order  that  they  might  be  jolly  little  creatures, 
but  as  extensions  of  the  father's  individuality. 
The  home,  the  environment  gradually  con- 
structed for  these  secondary  beings,  constitutes 
another  complex  organization,  which  he  super- 
imposes on  the  complex  organization  of  his  pro- 
fession or  trade,  and  his  brain  has  to  carry  and 
vitalize  the  two  of  them.  All  his  energies  are 
absorbed,  and  they  are  absorbed  so  utterly  that 
once  a  year  he  is  obliged  to  take  a  holiday  lest 
he  should  break  down,  and  even  the  organization 
of  the  holiday  is  complex  and  exhausting. 

Now    assuming  —  a    tremendous    assumption! 
—  that  by  all  this  he  really  is  providing  security 


ALL  MEANS  AND  NO  END        31 

for  the  future,  what  conscious  direct,  personal 
satisfaction  in  the  present  does  the  onerous  pro- 
gramme actually  yield?  I  admit  that  it  yields 
the  primitive  satisfaction  of  keeping  body  and 
soul  together.  But  a  Hottentot  in  a  kraal  gets 
the  same  satisfaction  at  less  expense.  I  admit 
also  that  it  ought  theoretically  to  yield  the  con- 
scious satisfaction  which  accompanies  any 
sustained  effort  of  the  faculties.  I  deny  that  in 
fact  it  does  yield  this  satisfaction,  for  the  reason 
that  the  man  is  too  busy  ever  to  examine  the 
treasures  of  his  soul.  And  what  else  does  it 
yield?  For  what  other  immediate  end  is  the 
colossal  travail  being  accomplished? 

Well,  it  may,  and  does,  occur  that  the  plain 
man  is  practising  physical  and  intellectual  cal- 
isthenics, and  running  a  vast  business  and  send- 
ing ships  and  men  to  the  horizons  of  the  earth, 
and  keeping  a  home  in  a  park,  and  oscillating 
like  a  rapid  shuttle  daily  between  office  and 
home,  and  lying  awake  at  nights,  and  losing 
his  eyesight  and  his  digestion,  and  staking  his 
health,  and  risking  misery  for  the  beings  whom 
he  cherishes,  and  enriching  insurance  companies, 
and  providing  joy-rides  for  nice  young  women 
whom  he  has  never  seen  —  and  all  his  present 


32     THE  PLAIN  MAN  AND  HIS  WIFE 

profit  therefrom  is  a  game  of  golf  with  a  free 
mind  once  a  fortnight,  or  half  an  hour's  inti- 
macy with  his  wife  and  a  free  mind  once  a  week 
or  so,  or  a  ten  minutes'  duel  with  that  daugh- 
ter of  his  and  a  free  mind  on  an  occasional  even- 
ing! Nay,  it  may  occur  that  after  forty  years  of 
incessant  labour,  in  answer  to  an  inquiry  as  to 
where  the  genuine  conscious  fun  comes  in,  he 
has  the  right  only  to  answer :  "  Well,  when  I 
have  time,  I  take  the  dog  out  for  a  walk.  I  en- 
joy larking  with  the  dog." 

The  estimable  plain  man,  with  his  horror  of 
self-examination,  is  apt  to  forget  the  immediate 
end  of  existence  in  the  means.  And  so  much  so, 
that  when  the  first  distant  end  —  that  of  a  secure 
old  age  —  approaches  achievement,  he  is  inca- 
pable of  admitting  it  to  be  achieved,  and  goes  on 
worrying  and  worrying  about  the  means  —  from 
simple  habit!  And  when  he  does  admit  the 
achievement  of  the  desired  end,  and  abandons 
the  means,  he  has  so  badly  prepared  himself  to 
relish  the  desired  end  that  the  mere  change  kills 
him !  His  epitaph  ought  to  read :  "  Here  lies 
the  plain  man  of  common  sense,  whose  life  was  all 
means  and  no  end." 

A  remedy  will  be  worth  finding. 


II 

THE  TASTE  FOR  PLEASURE 
I 

ONE  evening  —  it  is  bound  to  happen 
in  the  evening  when  it  does  happen 
—  the  plain  man  whose  case  I  en- 
deavoured to  analyse  in  the  previous  chapter  will 
suddenly  explode.  The  smouldering  volcano 
within  that  placid  and  wise  exterior  will  burst 
forth,  and  the  surrounding  country  will  be 
covered  with  the  hot  lava  of  his  immense  hidden 
grievance.  The  business  day  has  perhaps  been 
marked  by  an  unusual  succession  of  annoyances, 
exasperations,  disappointments  —  but  he  has  met 
them  with  fine  philosophic  calm;  fatigue  has 
overtaken  him  —  but  it  has  not  overcome  him; 
throughout  the  long  ordeal  at  the  office  he  has 
remained  master  of  himself,  a  wondrous  example 
to  the  young  and  the  foolish.  And  then  some 
entirely  unimportant  occurrence  —  say,  an  invi- 
tation to-  a  golf  foursome  which  his  duties  forbid 

33 


34    THE  PLAIN  MAN  AND  HIS  WIFE 

him  to  accept  —  a  trifle,  a  nothing,  comes  along 
and  brings  about  the  explosion,  in  a  fashion 
excessively  disconcerting  to  the  onlooker,  and 
he  exclaims,  acidly,  savagely,  with  a  profound 
pessimism : 

"  What  pleasure  do  I  get  out  of  life?  " 
And  in  that  single  abrupt  question  (to  which 
there  is  only  one  answer)  he  lays  bare  the  cen- 
tral flaw  of  his  existence. 

The  onlooker  will  probably  be  his  wife,  and 
the  tone  employed  will  probably  imply  that  she 
is  somehow  mysteriously  to  blame  for  the  fact 
that  his  earthly  days  are  not  one  unbroken  series 
of  joyous  diversions.  He  has  no  pose  to  keep 
up  with  his  wife.  And,  moreover,  if  he  really 
loves  her  he  will  find  a  certain  curious  satisfac- 
tion in  hurting  her  now  and  then,  in  being  wil- 
fully unjust  to  her,  as  he  would  never  hurt  or 
be  unjust  to  a  mere  friend.  (Herein  is  one  of 
the  mysterious  differences  between  love  and  af- 
fection!) She  is  alarmed  and  secretly  aghast,  as 
well  she  may  be.  He  also  is  secretly  aghast. 
For  he  has  confessed  a  fact  which  is  an  incon- 
venient  fact ;  and  Anglo-Saxons  have  such  a  hor- 
ror of  inconvenient  facts  that  they  prefer  to  ignore 
them  egjen  to  themselves.     To  pretend  that  things 


THE  TASTE  FOR  PLEASURE      35 

are  not  what  they  are  is  regarded  by  Anglo- 
Saxons  as  a  proof  of  strength  of  mind  and  whole- 
someness  of  disposition;  while  to  admit  that 
things  are  indeed  what  they  are  is  deemed  to  be 
either  weakness  or  cynicism.  The  plain  man  is 
incapable  of  being  a  cynic;  he  feels,  therefore, 
that  he  has  been  guilty  of  weakness,  and  this,  of 
course,  makes  him  very  cross. 
1  "Can't  something  be  done?"  says  his  wife, 
meaning,  "  Can't  something  be  done  to  ameliorate 
your  hard  lot?  " 

(Misguided  creature !  It  was  the  wrong  phrase 
to  use.  And  any  phrase  would  have  been  the 
wrong  phrase.  She  ought  to  have  caressed  him, 
for  to  a  caress  there  is  no  answer.) 

"  You  know  perfectly  well  that  nothing  can  be 
done ! "  he  snaps  her  up,  like  a  tiger  snapping  at 
the  fawn.  And  his  eyes,  challenging  hers,  seem 
to  say:  "Can  I  neglect  my  business?  Can  I 
shirk  my  responsibilities?  Where  would  you  be 
if  I  shirked  them?  Where  would  the  children 
be?  What  about  old  age,  sickness,  death, 
quarter-day,  rates,  taxes,  and  your  new  hat?  I 
have  to  provide  for  the  rainy  day  and  for  the 
future.  I  am  succeeding,  moderately;  but  let 
there  be  no  mistake  —  success  means  that  I  must 


36     THE  PLAIN  MAN  AND  HIS  WIFE 

sacrifice  present  pleasure.  Pleasure  is  all  very 
well  for  you  others,  but  I  — "  And  then  he  will 
finish  aloud,  with  the  air  of  an  offended  and  sar- 
castic martyr :     "  Something  be  done,  indeed !  " 

She  sighs.     The  domestic  scene  is  over. 

Now,  he  may  be  honestly  convinced  that 
nothing  can  be  done.  Let  us  grant  as  much. 
But  obviously  it  suits  his  pride  to  assume  that 
nothing  can  be  done.  To  admit  the  contrary 
would  be  to  admit  that  he  was  leaving  something 
undone,  that  he  had  organized  his  existence 
clumsily,  even  that  he  had  made  a  fundamental 
miscalculation  in  the  arrangement  of  his  career. 
He  has  confessed  to  grave  dissatisfaction.  It  be- 
hoves him,  for  the  sake  of  his  own  dignity  and 
reputation,  to  be  quite  sure  that  the  grave  dis- 
satisfaction is  unavoidable,  inevitable,  and  that 
the  blame  for  it  rests  with  the  scheme  of  the 
universe,  and  not  with  his  particular  private 
scheme.  His  role  is  that  of  the  brave,  strong, 
patient  victim  of  an  alleged  natural  law,  by  rea- 
son of  which  the  present  must  ever  be  sacrificed 
to  the  future,  and  he  discovers  a  peculiar  mis- 
erable delight  in  the  role.  "  Miserable  "  is  the 
right  adjective. 


THE  TASTE  FOR  PLEASURE      37 


II 

Nevertheless,  in  his  quality  of  a  wise  plain  man, 
he  would  never  agree  that  any  problem  of  human 
conduct,  however  hard  and  apparently  hopeless, 
could  not  be  solved  by  dint  of  sagacity  and  in- 
genuity —  provided  it  was  the  problem  of  another 
person !  He  is  quite  fearfully  good  at  solving  the 
problems  of  his  friends.  Indeed,  his  friends,  rec- 
ognizing this,  constantly  go  to  him  for  advice.  If 
a  friend  consulted  him  and  said : 

"  Look  here,  I'm  engaged  in  an  enterprise 
which  will  absorb  all  my  energies  for  three  years. 
It  will  enable  me  in  the  meantime  to  live  and  to 
keep  my  family,  but  I  shall  have  scarcely  a  mo- 
ment's freedom  of  mind.  I  may  have  a  little 
leisure,  but  of  what  use  is  leisure  without  free- 
dom of  mind?  As  for  pleasure,  I  shall  simply 
forget  what  it  is.  My  life  will  be  one  long 
struggle.  The  ultimate  profit  is  extremely  un- 
certain. It  may  be  fairly  good;  on  the  other 
hand,  it  may  be  nothing  at  all." 


38    THE  PLAIN  MAN  AND  HIS  WIFE 

The  plain  man,  being  also  blunt,  would  as- 
suredly interrupt: 

"  My  dear  fellow,  what  a  fool  you've  been !  " 
Yet  this  case  is  in  essence  the  case  of  the  wise 
plain  man.  The  chief  difference  between  the 
two  cases  is  that  the  wise  plain  man  has  enslaved 
himself  for  about  thirty  years  instead  of  three, 
with  naught  but  a  sheer  gambling  chance  of  final 
reward!  Not  being  one  of  the  rare  individuals 
with  whom  business  is  a  passion,  but  just  an 
average  plain  man,  he  is  labouring  daily  against 
the  grain,  stultifying  daily  one  part  of  his  nature, 
on  the  supposition  that  later  he  will  be  recom- 
pensed. In  other  words,  he  is  preparing  to  live, 
so  that  at  a  distant  date  he  may  be  in  a  condi- 
tion to  live.  He  has  not  effected  a  compromise 
between  the  present  and  the  future.  His  own 
complaint  — "  What  pleasure  do  I  get  out  of 
life?" — proves  that  he  is  completely  sacrificing 
the  present  to  the  future.  And  how  elusive  is 
the  future!  Like  the  horizon,  it  always  recedes. 
If,  when  he  was  thirty,  some  one  had  foretold  that 
at  forty-five,  with  a  sympathetic  wife  and  family 
and  an  increasing  income,  he  would  be  as  far  off 
happiness  as  ever,  he  would  have  smiled  at  the 
prophecy. 


THE  TASTE  FOR  PLEASURE      39 

The  consulting  friend,  somewhat  nettled  by 
the  plain  man's  bluntness,  might  retort : 

"  I  may  or  may  not  have  been  a  fool.  That's 
not  the  point.  The  point  is  that  I  am  definitely 
in  the  enterprise,  and  can't  get  out  of  it.  And 
there's  nothing  to  be  done." 

Whereupon  the  plain  man,  in  an  encouraging, 
enheartening,  reasonable  tone,  would  respond: 

"  Don't  say  that,  my  dear  chap.  Of  course,  if 
you're  in  it,  you're  in  it.  But  give  me  all  the 
details.  Let's  examine  the  thing.  And  allow 
me  to  tell  you  that  no  case  that  looks  bad  is  as 
bad  as  it  looks." 

It  is  precisely  in  this  spirit  that  the  plain  man 
should  approach  his  own  case.  He  should  say 
to  himself  in  that  reasonable  tone  which  he  em- 
ploys to  his  friend,  and  which  is  so  impressive: 
"  Let  me  examine  the  thing." 

And  now  the  plain  man  who  is  reading  this  and 
unwillingly  fitting  the  cap  will  irately  protest: 
"  Do  you  suppose  I  haven't  examined  my  own 
case?  Do  you  suppose  I  don't  understand  it? 
I  understand  it  thoroughly.  Who  should  under- 
stand it  if  I  don't?  I  beg  to  inform  you  that  I 
know  absolutely  all  about  it." 

Still  the  strong  probability  is  that  he  has  not 


40    THE  PLAIN  MAN  AND  HIS  WIFE 

examined  it.  The  strong  probability  is  that  he 
has  just  lain  awake  of  a  night  and  felt  extremely 
sorry  for  himself,  and  at  the  same  time  rather 
proud  of  his  fortitude.  Which  process  does  not 
amount  to  an  examination ;  it  amounts  merely  to 
an  indulgence.  As  for  knowing  absolutely  all 
about  it,  he  has  not  even  noticed  that  the  habit  of 
feeling  sorry  for  himself  and  proud  of  his  forti- 
tude is  slowly  growing  on  him,  and  tending  to 
become  his  sole  form  of  joy  —  a  morbid  habit 
and  a  sickly  joy!  He  is  sublimely  unaware  of 
that  increasing  irritability  which  others  discuss 
behind  his  back.  He  has  no  suspicion  that  he  is 
balefully  affecting  the  general  atmosphere  of  his 
home. 

Above  all,  he  does  not  know  that  he  is  losing 
the  capacity  for  pleasure.  Indeed,  if  it  were  sug- 
gested that  such  a  change  was  going  on  in  him  he 
would  be  vexed  and  distressed.  He  would  cry 
out :  "  Don't  you  make  any  mistake !  I  could 
amuse  myself  as  well  as  any  man,  if  only  I  got 
the  chance !  "  And  yet,  how  many  tens  of  thou- 
sands of  plain  and  (as  it  is  called)  successful  men 
have  been  staggered  to  discover,  when  ambition 
was  achieved  and  the  daily  yoke  thrown  off  and 


THE  TASTE  FOR  PLEASURE      41 

the  direct  search  for  immediate  happiness  com- 
menced, that  the  relish  for  pleasure  had  faded 
unnoticed  away  —  proof  enough  that  they  had 
neither  examined  nor  understood  themselves! 
There  is  no  more  ingenuous  soul,  in  affairs  of 
supreme  personal  importance  than  your  wise 
plain  man,  whom  all  his  friends  consult  for  his 
sagacity. 

Mind,  I  am  not  hereby  accusing  the  plain  man 
of  total  spiritual  blindness  —  any  more  than  I 
would  accuse  him  of  total  physical  blindness  be- 
cause he  cannot  see  how  he  looks  to  others  when 
he  walks  into  a  room.  For  nobody  can  see  all 
round  himself,  nor  know  absolutely  all  about  his 
own  case;  and  he  who  boasts  that  he  can  is  no 
better  than  a  fool,  despite  his  wisdom;  he  is  not 
even  at  the  beginning  of  any  really  useful  wis- 
dom. But  I  do  accuse  my  plain  man  of  deliber- 
ately shutting  his  eyes,  from  pride  and  from 
sloth.  I  do  say  that  he  might  know  a  great  deal 
more  about  his  case  than  he  actually  does  know, 
if  only  he  would  cease  from  pitying  and  praising 
himself  in  the  middle  of  the  night,  and  tackle  the 
business  of  self-examination  in  a  rational,  vigor- 
ous, and  honest  fashion  —  not  in  the  dark,  but  in 


42    THE  PLAIN  MAN  AND  HIS  WIFE 

the  sane  sunlight.  And  I  do  further  say  that  a 
self-examination  thus  properly  conducted  might 
have  results  which  would  stultify  those  out- 
rageous remarks  of  his  to  his  wife. 


THE  TASTE  FOR  PLEASURE      43 


III 

Few  people  —  in  fact,  very  few  people  indeed 
—  ever  realize  the  priceless  value  of  the  ancient 
counsel :  "  Know  thyself."  It  seems  so  trite,  so 
ordinary.  It  seems  so  easy  to  acquire,  this 
knowledge.  Does  not  every  one  possess  it? 
Can  it  not  be  got  by  simply  sitting  down  in  a 
chair  and  yielding  to  a  mood?  And  yet  this 
knowledge  is  just  about  as  difficult  to  acquire  as 
a  knowledge  of  Chinese.  Certainly  nine  hundred 
and  ninety-nine  people  out  of  a  thousand  reach 
the  age  of  sixty  before  getting  the  rudiments  of 
it.  The  majority  of  us  die  in  almost  complete 
ignorance  of  it.  And  none  may  be  said  to  mas- 
ter it  in  all  its  exciting  branches.  Why,  you  can 
choose  any  of  your  friends  —  the  wisest  of  them 
—  and  instantly  tell  him  something  glaringly 
obvious  about  his  own  character  and  actions  — 
and  be  rewarded  for  your  trouble  by  an  indig- 
nantly sincere  denial!  You  had  noticed  it;  all 
his  friends  had  noticed  it.  But  he  had  not 
noticed   it.     Far   from  having  noticed  it,  he  is 


44    THE  PLAIN  MAN  AND  HIS  WIFE 

convinced  that  it  exists  only  in  your  malicious 
imagination.  For  example,  go  to  a  friend  whose 
sense  of  humour  is  notoriously  imperfect,  and 
say  gently  to  him :  "  Your  sense  of  humour  is 
imperfect,  my  friend,"  and  see  how  he  will  re- 
ceive the  information !  So  much  for  the  rarity 
of  self-knowledge. 

Self-knowledge  is  difficult  because  it  demands 
intellectual  honesty.  It  demands  that  one  shall 
not  blink  the  facts,  that  one  shall  not  hide  one's 
head  in  the  sand,  and  that  one  shall  not  be  afraid 
of  anything  that  one  may  happen  to  see  in  look- 
ing round.  It  is  rare  because  it  demands  that 
one  shall  always  be  able  to  distinguish  between 
the  man  one  thinks  one  ought  to  be  and  the  man 
one  actually  is.  And  it  is  rare  because  it  de- 
mands impartial  detachment  and  a  certain 
quality  of  fine  shamelessness  —  the  shameless- 
ness  which  confesses  openly  to  oneself  and  finds 
a  legitimate  pleasure  in  confessing.  By  way  of 
compensation  for  its  difficulty,  the  pursuit  of  self- 
knowledge  happens  to  be  one  of  the  most  en- 
trancing of  all  pursuits,  as  those  who  have  se- 
riously practised  it  are  well  aware.  Its  interest 
is  inexhaustible  and  grows  steadily.  Unhappily, 
the  Anglo-Saxon  racial  temperament  is  inimical 


THE  TASTE  FOR  PLEASURE      45 

to  it.  The  Latins  like  it  better.  To  feel  its 
charm  one  should  listen  to  a  highly-cultivated 
Frenchman  analysing  himself  for  the  benefit  of 
an  intimate  companion.  Still,  even  Anglo- 
Saxons  may  try  it  with  advantage. 

The  branch  of  self-knowledge  which  is  par- 
ticularly required  for  the  solution  of  the  im- 
mediate case  of  the  plain  man  now  under  con- 
sideration is  not  a  very  hard  one.  It  does  not 
involve  the  recognition  of  crimes  or  even  of 
grave  faults.  It  is  simply  the  knowledge  of 
what  interests  him  and  what  bores  him. 

Let  him  enter  upon  the  first  section  of  it  with 
candour.  Let  him  be  himself.  And  let  him  be 
himself  without  shame.  Let  him  ever  remember 
that  it  is  not  a  sin  to  be  bored  by  what  interests 
others,  or  to  be  interested  in  what  bores  others. 
Let  him  in  this  private  inquiry  give  his  natural 
instincts  free  play,  for  it  is  precisely  the  gradual 
suppression  of  his  natural  instincts  which  has 
brought  him  to  his  present  pass.  At  first  he  will 
probably  murmur  in  a  fatigued  voice  that  he 
cannot  think  of  anything  at  all  that  interests  him. 
Then  let  him  dig  down  among  his  buried  in- 
stincts. Let  him  recall  his  bright  past  of  dreams, 
before  he  had  become  a  victim  imprisoned  in  the 


46    THE  PLAIN  MAN  AND  HIS  WIFE 

eternal  groove.  Everybody  has,  or  has  had,  a 
secret  desire,  a  hidden  leaning.  Let  him  dis- 
cover what  his  is,  or  was  —  gardening,  philoso- 
phy, reading,  travel,  billiards,  raising  animals, 
training  animals,  killing  animals,  yachting,  col- 
lecting pictures  or  postage-stamps  or  autographs 
or  snuff-boxes  or  scalps,  astronomy,  kite-flying, 
house-furnishing,  foreign  languages,  cards,  swim- 
ming, diary-keeping,  the  stage,  politics,  car- 
pentry, riding  or  driving,  music,  staying  up  late, 
getting  up  early,  tree-planting,  tree-felling,  town- 
planning,  amateur  soldiering,  statics,  entomol- 
ogy, botany,  elocution,  children-fancying,  cigar- 
fancying,  wife-fancying,  placid  domestic  even- 
ings, conjuring,  bacteriology,  thought-reading, 
mechanics,  geology,  sketching,  bell-ringing, 
theosophy,  his  own  soul,  even  golf.  .  .  . 

I  mention  a  few  of  the  ten  million  directions 
in  which  his  secret  desire  may  point  or  have 
pointed.  I  have  probably  not  mentioned  the 
right  direction.  But  he  can  find  it.  He  can  per- 
haps find  several  right  directions  without  too 
much  trouble. 

And  now  he  says: 

"  I  suppose  you  mean  me  to  *  take  up  '  one  of 
these  things?  " 


THE  TASTE  FOR  PLEASURE      47 

I  do,  seeing  that  he  has  hitherto  neglected  so 
clear  a  duty.  If  he  had  attended  to  it  earlier,  and 
with  perseverance  he  would  not  be  in  the  hu- 
miliating situation  of  exclaiming  bitterly  that  he 
has  no  pleasure  in  life. 

"But,"  he  resists,  "you  know  perfectly  well 
that  I  have  no  time !  " 

To  which  I  am  obliged  to  make  reply: 

"  My  dear  sir,  it  is  not  your  wife  you  are  talk- 
ing to.     Kindly  be  honest  with  me." 

I  admit  that  his  business  is  very  exhausting 
and  exigent.  For  the  sake  of  argument  I  will 
grant  that  he  cannot  safely  give  it  an  instant's 
less  time  than  he  is  now  giving  it.  But  even  so 
his  business  does  not  absorb  at  the  outside  more 
than  seventy  hours  of  the  hundred  and  ten  hours 
during  which  he  is  wide  awake  each  week.  The 
rest  of  the  time  he  spends  either  in  performing 
necessary  acts  in  a  tedious  way  or  in  performing 
acts  which  are  not  only  tedious  to  him,  but  ut- 
terly unnecessary  (for  his  own  hypothesis  is  that 
he  gets  no  pleasure  out  of  life) — visiting,  din- 
ner-giving, cards,  newspaper-reading,  placid 
domestic  evenings,  evenings  out,  bar-lounging, 
sitting  aimlessly  around,  dandifying  himself, 
week-ending,  theatres,  classical  concerts,  litera- 


48     THE  PLAIN  MAN  AND  HIS  WIFE 

ture,  suburban  train-travelling,  staying  up  late, 
being  in  the  swim,  even  golf.  In  whatever  man- 
ner he  is  whittling  away  his  leisure,  it  is  the 
wrong  manner,  for  the  sole  reason  that  it  bores 
him.  Moreover,  all  whittling  of  leisure  is  a  mis- 
take. Leisure,  like  work,  should  be  organized, 
and  it  should  be  organized  in  large  pieces. 

The  proper  course  clearly  is  to  substitute  acts 
which  promise  to  be  interesting  for  acts  which 
have  proved  themselves  to  produce  nothing  but 
tedium,  and  to  carry  out  the  change  with  brains, 
in  a  business  spirit.  And  the  first  essential  is  to 
recognize  that  something  has  definitely  to  go  by 
the  board. 

He  protests: 

"  But  I  do  only  the  usual  things  —  what  every- 
body else  does!  And  then  it's  time  to  go  to 
bed." 

The  case,  however,  is  his  case,  not  everybody 
else's  case.  Why  should  he  submit  to  everlast- 
ing boredom  for  the  mere  sake  of  acting  like 
everybody  else? 

He  continues  in  the  same  strain : 

"  But  you  are  asking  me  to  change  my  whole 
life  —  at  my  age !  " 


THE  TASTE  FOR  PLEASURE      49 

Nothing  of  the  sort!     I  am  only  suggesting 
that  he  should  begin  to  live. 
And  then  finally  he  cries : 
"  It's  too  drastic.     I  haven't  the  pluck !  " 
Now  we  are  coming  to  the  real  point. 


50    THE  PLAIN  MAN  AND  HIS  WIFE 


IV 

The  machinery  of  his  volition,  in  all 
directions  save  one,  has  been  clogged,  through 
persistent  neglect,  due  to  over-specialization. 
His  mind  needs  to  be  cleared,  and  it  can  be 
cleared  —  it  will  clear  itself  —  if  regular  periods 
of  repose  are  enforced  upon  it.  As  things  are,  it 
practically  never  gets  a  holiday  from  business.  I 
do  not  mean  that  the  plain  man  is  always  think- 
ing about  his  business;  but  I  mean  that  he  is 
always  liable  to  think  about  his  business,  that  his 
business  is  always  present  in  his  mind,  even 
if  dormant  there,  and  that  at  every  oppor- 
tunity, if  the  mind  happens  to  be  inactive, 
it  sits  up  querulously  and  insists  on  at- 
tention. The  man's  mind  is  indeed  rather  like  an 
unfortunate  domestic  servant  who,  though  not 
always  at  work,  is  never  off  duty,  never  night  or 
day  free  from  the  menace  of  a  damnable  electric 
bell ;  and  it  is  as  stale  as  that  servant.  His  busi- 
ness is  capable  of  ringing  the  bell  when  the  man 
is  eating  his  soup,  when  he  is  sitting  alone  with 


THE  TASTE  FOR  PLEASURE      51 

his  wife  on  a  warm  summer  evening,  and  espe- 
cially when  he  wakes  just  before  dawn  to  pity 
and  praise  himself. 

But  he  defends  the  position: 

"  My  business  demands  much  reflection  —  con- 
stant watchfulness." 

Well,  in  the  first  place,  an  enterprise  which  de- 
mands watchfulness  day  and  night  from  the  same 
individual  is  badly  organized,  and  should  be  re- 
organized. It  runs  contrary  to  the  common 
sense  of  Nature.  And,  in  the  second  place,  his 
defence  is  insincere.  He  does  not  submit  to  the 
eternal  preoccupation  because  he  thinks  he  ought, 
but  simply  because  he  cannot  help  it.  How 
often,  especially  just  before  the  dawn,  has  he  not 
longed  to  be  delivered  from  the  perfectly  futile 
preoccupation,  so  that  he  might  go  to  sleep 
again  —  and  failed  to  get  free!  How  often,  in 
the  midst  of  some  jolly  gathering,  has  he  not  felt 
secretly  desolate  because  the  one  tyrannic  topic 
would  run  round  and  round  in  his  mind,  just  like 
a  clockwork  mouse,  accomplishing  no  useful  end, 
and  making  impossible  any  genuine  participation 
in  the  gaiety  that  environs  him! 

Instead  of  being  necessary  to  the  success  of 
his  business,  this  morbid  preoccupation  is  posi- 


52     THE  PLAIN  MAN  AND  HIS  WIFE 

tively  detrimental  to  his  business.  He  would 
think  much  more  usefully,  more  powerfully,  more 
creatively,  about  his  business  if  during  at  least 
thirteen  consecutive  hours  each  day  he  never 
thought  of  it  at  all. 

And  there  is  still  a  further  point  in  this  con- 
nection. Let  him  imagine  how  delightful  it  must 
be  for  the  people  in  the  home  which  he  has  made, 
the  loving  people  whom  he  loves  and  to  whom  in 
theory  he  is  devoting  his  career,  to  feel  con- 
tinually that  he  only  sees  them  obscurely  through 
the  haze  emanating  from  his  business!  Why  — 
worse !  —  even  when  he  is  sitting  with  his  wife, 
he  and  she  might  as  well  be  communicating  with 
each  other  across  a  grille  against  which  a  turn- 
key is  standing  and  listening  to  every  word  said! 
Let  him  imagine  how  flattering  for  her!  She 
might  be  more  flattered,  at  any  rate  more  thrilled, 
if  she  knew  that  instead  of  thinking  about  his 
business  he  was  thinking  about  another  woman. 
Could  he  shut  the  front  door  every  afternoon 
on  his  business,  the  effect  would  not  only  be 
beneficial  upon  it  and  upon  him,  but  his 
wife  would  smile  the  warm  smile  of  wisdom 
justified.  Like  most  women,  she  has  a  firmer 
grasp  of  the  essence  of  life  than  the  man  upon 


THE  TASTE  FOR  PLEASURE      53 

whom  she  is  dependent.  She  knows  with  her 
heart  (what  he  only  knows  with  his  brain)  that 
business,  politics,  and  "  all  that  sort  of  thing  " 
are  secondary  to  real  existence,  the  mere  pre- 
liminaries of  it.  She  would  rejoice,  in  the  blush 
of  the  compliment  he  was  paying  her,  that  he 
had  at  last  begun  to  comprehend  the  ultimate 
values ! 

So  far  as  I  am  aware,  there  is  no  patent  device 
for  suddenly  gaining  that  control  of  the  mind 
which  will  enable  one  to  free  it  from  an  obsession 
such  as  the  obsession  of  the  plain  man.  The 
desirable  end  can,  however,  be  achieved  by  slow 
degrees,  and  by  an  obvious  method  which  con- 
tains naught  of  the  miraculous.  If  the  victim  of 
the  obsession  will  deliberately  try  to  think  of 
something  else,  or  to  think  of  nothing  at  all  — 
every  time  he  catches  himself  in  the  act  of  think- 
ing about  his  business  out  of  hours,  he  certainly 
will,  sooner  or  later  —  probably  in  about  a  fort- 
night—  cure  the  obsession,  or  at  least  get  the 
upper  hand  of  it.  The  treatment  demands 
perseverance,  but  it  emphatically  does  not  de- 
mand an  impossibly  powerful  effort.  It  is  an 
affair  oftrifling  pertinacious  touches. 

It  is  a  treatment  easier  to  practise  during  day- 


54    THE  PLAIN  MAN  AND  HIS  WIFE 

light,  in  company,  when  distractions  are  plenti- 
ful, than  in  the  solitude  of  the  night.  Trium- 
phantly to  battle  with  an  obsession  at  night, 
when  the  vitality  is  low  and  the  egoism  intensi- 
fied, is  extremely  difficult.  But  the  small  persist- 
ent successes  of  the  day  will  gradually  have  their 
indirect  influence  on  the  night.  A  great  deal  can 
also  be  done  by  simple  resolute  suggestion. 
Few  persons  seem  to  know  —  what  is,  neverthe- 
less, a  fact  —  that  the  most  effective  moment  for 
making  resolves  is  in  the  comatose  calm  which 
precedes  going  to  sleep.  The  entire  organism  is 
then  in  a  passive  state,  and  more  permanently 
receptive  of  the  imprint  of  volition  than  at  any 
other  period  of  the  twenty-four  hours.  If  regu- 
larly at  that  moment  the  man  says  clearly  and 
imperiously  to  himself,  "  I  will  not  allow  my 
business  to  preoccupy  me  at  home;  I  will  not 
allow  my  business  to  preoccupy  me  at  home;  I 
will  not  allow  my  business  to  preoccupy  me  at 
home,"  he  will  be  astonished  at  the  results; 
which  results,  by  the  way,  are  reached  by  sub- 
conscious and  therefore  unperceived  channels 
whose  workings  we  can  only  guess  at. 

And  when  the  obsession  is  beaten,  destroyed, 
he  will  find  himself  not  merely  fortified  with  the 


THE  TASTE  FOR  PLEASURE         55 

necessary  pluck  and  initiative  for  importing  a 
new  interest  into  his  existence.  His  instincts  of 
their  own  accord  will  be  asking  for  that  interest, 
for  they  will  have  been  set  free. 


56    THE  PLAIN  MAN  AND  HIS  WIFE 


In  choosing  a  distraction  —  that  is  to  say,  in 
choosing  a  rival  to  his  business  —  he  should 
select  some  pursuit  whose  nature  differs  as  much 
as  possible  from  the  nature  of  his  business,  and 
which  will  bring  into  activity  another  side  of  his 
character.  If  his  business  is  monotonous,  de- 
manding care  and  solicitude  rather  than  irregular 
intense  efforts  of  the  brain,  then  let  his  distrac- 
tion be  such  as  will  make  a  powerful  call  upon 
his  brain.  But  if,  on  the  other  hand,  the  course 
of  his  business  runs  in  crises  that  string  up  the 
brain  to  its  tightest  strain,  then  let  his  distraction 
be  a  foolish  and  merry  one.  Many  men  fall  into 
the  error  of  assuming  that  their  hobbies  must  be 
as  dignified  and  serious  as  their  vocations,  though 
surely  the  example  of  the  greatest  philosophers 
ought  to  have  taught  them  better!  They  seem 
to  imagine  that  they  should  continually  be  im- 
proving themselves,  in  either  body  or  mind.  If 
they  take  up  a  sport,  it  is  because  the  sport  may 
improve  their  health.     And  if  the  hobby  is  in- 


THE  TASTE  FOR  PLEASURE      57 

tellectual  it  must  needs  be  employed  to  improve 
their  brain.  The  fact  is  that  their  conception  of 
self-improvement  is  too  narrow.  In  their  re- 
stricted sense  of  the  phrase,  they  possibly  don't 
need  improving;  they  possibly  are  already  im- 
proved to  the  point  of  being  a  nuisance  to  their 
fellow-creatures;  possibly  what  they  need  is 
worsening.  In  the  broad  and  full  sense  of  the 
phrase  self-improvement,  a  course  of  self-worsen- 
ing might  improve  them.  I  have  known  men  — 
and  everybody  has  known  them  —  who  would 
approach  nearer  to  perfection  if  they  could  only 
acquire  a  little  carelessness,  a  little  absent-mind- 
edness, a  little  illogicalness,  a  little  irrational  and 
infantile  gaiety,  a  little  unscrupulousness  in  the 
matter  of  the  time  of  day.  These  considerations 
should  be  weighed  before  certain  hobbies  are 
dismissed  as  being  unworthy  of  a  plain  man's 
notice. 

Then  comes  the  hour  of  decision,  in  which  the 
wise  plain  man  should  exert  all  that  force  of  will 
for  which  he  is  famous  in  his  house.  For  this 
hour  may  be  of  supreme  importance  —  may  be 
the  close  of  one  epoch  in  his  life  and  the  begin- 
ning of  another.  The  more  volitional  energy  he 
can  concentrate  in  it,  the  more  likely  is  he  to 


58    THE  PLAIN  MAN  AND  HIS  WIFE 

succeed  in  the  fine  enterprise  of  his  own  renais- 
sance. He  must  resolve  with  as  much  intensity 
of  will  as  he  once  put  into  the  resolution  which 
sent  him  to  propose  marriage  to  his  wife.  And, 
indeed,  he  must  be  ready  to  treat  his  hobby  some- 
what as  though  it  were  a  woman  desired  — -  with 
splendid  and  uncalculating  generosity.  He  must 
shower  money  on  it,  and,  what  is  more,  he  must 
shower  time  on  it.  He  must  do  the  thing 
properly.  A  hobby  is  not  a  hobby  until  it  is 
glorified,  until  some  real  sacrifice  has  been  made 
for  it.  If  he  has  chosen  a  hobby  that  is  costly, 
both  in  money  and  in  time,  if  it  is  a  hobby  diffi- 
cult for  a  busy  and  prudent  man  to  follow,  all 
the  better.  If  it  demands  that  his  business  shall 
suffer  a  little,  and  that  his  life-long  habits  of  in- 
dustry shall  seem  to  be  jeopardized,  again  all  the 
better.  For,  you  know,  despite  his  timid  fears, 
his  business  will  not  suffer,  and  lifelong  habits, 
even  good  ones,  are  not  easily  jeopardized.  One 
of  the  most  precious  jewels  of  advice  ever  offered 
to  the  plain  man  was  that  he  should  acquire  in- 
dustrious habits,  and  then  try  to  lose  them !  He 
will  soon  find  that  he  cannot  lose  them,  but  the 
transient  struggles  against  them  will  tend  al- 
ways to  restore  the  sane  balance  of  his  nature. 


THE  TASTE  FOR  PLEASURE      59 

He  must  deliberately  arrange  pleasures  for 
himself  in  connection  with  his  hobby,  and  as 
often  as  possible.  Once  a  week  at  least  his  pro- 
gramme should  comprise  some  item  of  relaxation 
to  which  he  can  look  forward  with  impatience  be- 
cause he  has  planned  it,  and  because  he  has  com- 
pelled seemingly  more  urgent  matters  to  give 
way  to  it ;  and  look  forward  to  it  he  must,  tasting 
it  in  advance,  enjoying  it  twice  over !  Thus  may 
the  appetite  for  pleasure,  the  ability  really  to 
savour  it,  be  restored  —  and  incidentally  kept  in 
good  trim  for1  full  use  when  old  age  arrives  and 
he  enters  the  lotus-land.  And  with  it  all,  when 
the  hour  of  enjoyment  comes,  he  must  insist  on 
his  mind  being  free;  expelling  every  preoccupa- 
tion, nonchalantly  accepting  risks  like  a  youth, 
he  must  abandon  himself  to  the  hour.  Let  him 
practise  lightheartedness  as  though  it  were  char- 
ity. Indeed,  it  is  charity  —  to  his  household,  for 
instance.     Ask  his  household. 

He  says: 

"  All  this  is  very  dangerous.  My  friends  won't 
recognize  me.  I  may  go  too  far.  I  may  become 
an  idler  and  a  spendthrift." 

Have  no  fear. 


Ill 

THE  RISKS  OF  LIFE 
I 

BY  one  of  those  coincidences  for  which 
destiny  is  sometimes  responsible,  the 
two  very  opposite  plain  men  whom  I 
am  going  to  write  about  were  most  happily 
named  Mr.  Alpha  and  Mr.  Omega ;  for,  owing  to 
a  difference  of  temperament,  they  stood  far  apart, 
at  the  extreme  ends  of  the  scale. 

In  youth,  of  course,  the  differences  between 
them  was  not  fully  apparent;  such  differences 
seldom  are  fully  apparent  in  youth.  It  first  made 
itself  felt  in  a  dramatic  way,  on  the  evening  when 
Mr.  Alpha  wanted  to  go  to  the  theatre  and  Mr. 
Omega  didn't.  At  this  period  they  were  both 
young  and  both  married,  and  the  two  couples 
shared  a  flat  together.  Also,  they  were  both  get- 
ting on  very  well  in  their  careers,  by  which  is 
meant  that  they  both  had  spare  cash  to  rattle  in 
the  pockets  of  their  admirably-creased  trousers. 

60 


THE  RISKS  OF  LIFE  61 

"  Come  to  the  theatre  with  us  to-night, 
Omega?  "  said  Mr.  Alpha. 

"  I  don't  think  we  will,"  said  Mr.  Omega. 

"  But  we  particularly  want  you  to,"  insisted 
Mr.  Alpha. 

"  Well,  it  can't  be  dene,"  said  Mr.  Omega. 

"  Got  another  engagement?  " 

"  No." 

"  Then  why  won't  you  come?  You  don't  mean 
to  tell  me  you're  hard  up?  " 

"  Yes,  I  do,"  said  Mr.  Omega. 

"  Then  you  ought  to  be  ashamed  of  yourself. 
What  have  you  been  doing  with  your  money 
lately?" 

"  I've  taken  out  a  biggish  life  assurance  policy, 
and  the  premiums  will  be  a  strain.  I  paid  the 
first  yesterday.     I'm  bled  white." 

"  Holy  Moses !  "  exclaimed  Mr.  Alpha,  shrug- 
ging his  shoulders. 

The  flat  was  shortly  afterwards  to  let.  The 
exclamation  "  Holy  Moses !  "  may  be  in  itself 
quite  harmless,  and  innocuous  to  friendship,  if  it 
is  pronounced  in  the  right,  friendly  tone.  Un- 
fortunately Mr.  Alpha  used  it  with  a  sarcastic  in- 
flection, implying  that  he  regarded  Mr.  Omega 
as  a  prig,  a  fussy  old  person,  a  miser,  a  spoil- 


62    THE  PLAIN  MAN  AND  HIS  WIFE 

sport,  and,  indeed,  something  less  than  a  man. 

"  You  can  only  live  your  life  once,"  said  Mr. 
Alpha. 

And  they  curved  gradually  apart.  This  was 
in  1893. 


THE  RISKS  OF  LIFE  63 


II 

Nearly  twenty  years  later  —  that  is  to  say,  not 
long  since  —  I  had  a  glimpse  of  Mr.  Alpha  at 
a  Saturday  lunch.  Do  not  imagine  that  Mr.  Al- 
pha's Saturday  lunch  took  place  in  a  miserable 
garret,  amid  every  circumstance  of  failure  and 
shame.  Success  in  life  has  very  little  to  do  with 
prudence.  It  has  a  great  deal  to  do  with  cour- 
age, initiative,  and  individual  force,  and  also  it 
is  not  unconnected  with  sheer  luck. 

Mr.  Alpha  had  succeeded  in  life,  and  the  lunch 
at  which  I  assisted  took  place  in  a  remarkably 
spacious  and  comfortable  house  surrounded  by 
gardens,  greenhouses,  garages,  stables,  and  all 
the  minions  necessary  to  the  upkeep  thereof. 
Mr.  Alpha  was  a  jolly,  a  kind-hearted,  an  im- 
mensely clever,  and  a  prolific  man.  I  call  him 
prolific  because  he  had  five  children.  There  he 
was,  with  his  wife  and  the  five  children ;  and  they 
were  all  enjoying  the  lunch  and  themselves  to  an 
extraordinary  degree.  It  was  a  delight  to  be 
with  them. 

It  is  necessarily  a  delight  to  be  with  people 


64    THE  PLAIN  MAN  AND  HIS  WIFE 

who  are  intelligent,  sympathetic  and  lively,  and 
who  have  ample  money  to  satisfy  their  desires. 
Somehow  you  can  hear  the  gold  chinking,  and 
the  sound  is  good  to  the  human  ear.  Even  the 
youngest  girl  had  money  in  her  nice  new  purse, 
to  do  with  it  as  she  liked.  For  Mr.  Alpha  never 
stinted.  He  was  generous  by  instinct,  and  he 
wanted  everybody  to  be  happy.  In  fact,  he  had 
turned  out  quite  an  unusual  father.  At  the  same 
time  he  fell  short  of  being  an  absolute  angel  of 
acquiescence  and  compliance.  For  instance,  his 
youngest  child,  a  girl,  broached  the  subject  of 
music  at  that  very  lunch.  She  was  fourteen,  and 
had  shown  some  of  her  father's  cleverness  at  a 
school  musical  examination.  She  was  rather  up- 
lifted about  her  music. 

"  Can't  I  take  it  up  seriously,  dad?  "  she  said, 
with  the  extreme  gravity  of  her  years. 

"  Of  course,"  said  he.  "  The  better  you  play, 
the  more  we  shall  all  be  pleased.  Don't  you 
think  we  deserve  some  reward  for  all  we've  suf- 
fered under  your  piano-practising?  " 

She  blushed. 

"  But  I  mean  seriously,"  she  insisted. 

"  Well,  my  pet,"  said  he,  "  you  don't  reckon  you 


THE  RISKS  OF  LIFE  65 

could  be  a  star  pianist,  do  you?  Fifteen  hundred 
dollars  a  concert,  and  so  on?  "  And,  as  she  was 
sitting  next  to  him,  he  affectionately  pinched  her 
delicious  ear. 

"  No,"  she  admitted.  "  But  I  could  teach.  I 
should  like  to  teach." 

"  Teach ! "  He  repeated  the  word  in  a 
changed  tone.  "  Teach !  What  in  Heaven's 
name  should  you  want  to  teach  for?  I  don't 
quite  see  a  daughter  of  mine  teaching." 

No  more  was  said  on  the  subject. 

The  young  woman  and  I  are  on  rather  confi- 
dential terms. 

-  "  It  is  a  shame,  isn't  it?  "  she  said  to  me  after- 
wards, with  feeling. 

"  Nothing  to  be  done?  "  I  inquired. 

"Nothing,"  said  she.  "I  knew  there  wasn't 
before  I  started.  The  dad  would  never  hear  of 
me  earning  my  own  living." 

The  two  elder  girls  —  twins  —  had  no  leaning 
towards  music,  and  no  leaning  towards  anything 
save  family  affection  and  social  engagements. 
They  had  a  grand  time,  and  the  grander  the  time 
they  had  the  keener  was  the  delight  of  Mr.  Alpha 
in  their  paradisaical  existence.    Truly  he  was  a 


66     THE  PLAIN  MAN  AND  HIS  WIFE 

pearl  among  fathers.  The  children  themselves 
admitted  it,  and  children  can  judge.  The  second 
son  wished  to  be  a  painter.  Many  a  father 
would  have  said,  "  I  shall  stand  none  of  this  non- 
sense about  painting.  The  business  is  there,  and 
into  the  business  you'll  go."  But  not  Mr.  Alpha. 
What  Mr.  Alpha  said  to  his  second  son  amounted 
to  this:  "  I  shall  be  charmed  for  a  son  of  mine 
to  be  a  painter.  Go  ahead.  Don't  worry. 
Don't  hurry.  I  will  give  you  an  ample  allow- 
ance to  keep  you  afloat  through  the  years  of 
struggle.  You  shall  not  be  like  other  beginners. 
You  shall  have  nothing  to  think  of  but  your  pro- 
fession. You  shall  be  in  a  position  to  wait. 
Instead  of  you  running  after  the  dealers,  you 
shall  comfortably  bide  your  time  until  the  dealers 
run  after  you." 

This  young  man  of  eighteen  was  precocious 
and  extravagant. 

"  I  say,  mater,"  he  said,  over  the  cheese,  "  can 
you  lend  me  fifty  dollars?" 

Mr.  Alpha  broke  in  sharply: 

"  What  are  you  worrying  your  mother  about 
money  for?  You  know  I  won't  have  it.  And 
I  won't  have  you  getting  into  debt  either." 

"  Well,  dad,  will  you  buy  a  picture  from  me?  " 


THE  RISKS  OF  LIFE  67 

"  Do  me  a  good  sketch  of  your  mother,  and 
I'll  give  you  fifty  dollars  for  it." 

"Cash  in  advance?  " 

"  Yes  —  on  your  promise.  But  understand,  no 
debts." 

The  eldest  son,  fitly  enougn,  was  in  the  busi- 
ness. Not,  however,  too  much  in  the  business. 
He  put  in  time  at  the  office  regularly.  He  was 
going  to  be  a  partner,  and  the  business  would 
ultimately  descend  to  him.  But  the  business 
wrinkled  not  his  brow.  Mr.  Alpha  was  quite 
ready  to  assume  every  responsibility  and  care. 
He  had  brains  and  energy  enough,  and  some- 
thing considerable  over.  Enough  over,  indeed, 
to  run  the  house  and  grounds.  Mrs.  Alpha 
could  always  sleep  soundly  at  night  secure  in  the 
thought  that  her  husband  would  smooth  away 
every  difficulty  for  her.  He  could  do  all  things 
so  much  more  efficiently  than  she  could,  were 
it  tackling  a  cook  or  a  tradesman,  or  deciding 
about  the  pattern  of  flowers  in  a  garden-bed. 

At  the  finish  of  the  luncheon  the  painter,  who 
had  been  meditative,  suddenly  raised  his  glass. 

"  Ladies  and  gentlemen,"  he  announced,  with 
solemnity,  "  I  beg  to  move  that  father  be  and 
hereby  is  a  brick." 


68     THE  PLAIN  MAN  AND  HIS  WIFE 

"Carried  nem.  con.,"  said  the  eldest  son. 

"  Loud  cheers ! "  said  the  more  pert  of  the 
twins. 

And  Mr.  Alpha  was  enchanted  with  his  home 
and  his  home-life. 


THE  RISKS  OF  LIFE  69 


III 
That  luncheon  was  the  latest  and  the 
most  profound  of  a  long  series  of  im- 
pressions which  had  been  influencing  my  mental 
attitude  towards  the  excellent,  the  successful, 
the  entirely  agreeable  Mr.  Alpha.  I  walked  home, 
a  distance  of  some  three  miles,  and  then  I 
walked  another  three  miles  or  so  on  the  worn 
carpet  of  my  study,  and  at  last  the  cup  of  my 
feelings  began  to  run  over,  and  I  sat  down  and 
wrote  a  letter  to  my  friend  Alpha.  The  letter 
was  thus  couched: 

"My  Dear  Alpha, 

"  I  have  long  wanted  to  tell  you  something, 
and  now  I  have  decided  to  give  vent  to  my  de- 
sire. There  are  two  ways  of  telling  you.  I 
might  take  the  circuitous  route  by  roundabout 
and  gentle  phrases,  through  hints  and  delicately 
undulating  suggestions,  and  beneath  the  soft 
shadow  of  flattering  cajoleries.  Or  I  might  dash 
straight  ahead.     The  latter  is  the  best,  perhaps. 

"  You  are  a  scoundrel,  my  dear  Alpha.     I  say 


70     THE  PLAIN  MAN  AND  HIS  WIFE 

it  in  the  friendliest  and  most  brutal  manner. 
And  you  are  not  merely  a  scoundrel  —  you  are 
the  most  dangerous  sort  of  scoundrel  —  the  smil- 
ing, benevolent  scoundrel. 

"  You  know  quite  well  that  your  house,  with 
all  that  therein  is,  stands  on  the  edge  of  a  preci- 
pice, and  that  at  any  moment  a  landslip  might 
topple  it  over  into  everlasting  ruin.  And  yet 
you  behave  as  though  your  house  was  planted  in 
the  midst  of  a  vast  and  secure  plain,  sheltered 
from  every  imaginable  havoc.  I  speak  meta- 
phorically, of  course.  It  is  not  a  material  preci- 
pice that  your  house  stands  on  the  edge  of;  it 
is  a  metaphorical  precipice.  But  the  perils  sym- 
bolized by  that  precipice  are  real  enough. 

"  It  is,  for  example,  a  real  chauffeur  whose 
real  wrist  may  by  a  single  false  movement  trans- 
form you  from  the  incomparable  Alpha  into  an 
item  in  the  books  of  the  registrar  of  deaths.  It 
is  a  real  microbe  who  may  at  this  very  instant  be 
industriously  planning  your  swift  destruction. 
And  it  is  another  real  microbe  who  may  have  al- 
ready made  up  his  or  her  mind  that  you  shall 
finish  your  days  helpless  and  incapable  on  the 
flat  of  your  back. 

"  Suppose  you  to  be  dead  —  what  would  hap- 


THE  RISKS  OF  LIFE  71 

pen?  You  would  leave  debts,  for,  although  you 
are  solvent,  you  are  only  solvent  because  you 
have  the  knack  of  always  putting  your  hand 
on  money,  and  death  would  automatically  make 
you  insolvent.  You  are  one  of  those  brave,  jolly 
fellows  who  live  up  to  their  income.  It  is  true 
that,  in  deference  to  fashion,  you  are  now  in- 
sured, but  for  a  trifling  and  inadequate  sum  which 
would  not  yield  the  hundredth  part  of  your  pres- 
ent income.  It  is  true  that  there  is  your  busi- 
ness. But  your  business  would  be  naught  with- 
out you.  You  are  your  business.  Remove  your- 
self from  it,  and  the  residue  is  negligible.  Your 
son,  left  alone  with  it,  would  wreck  it  in  a  year 
through  simple  ignorance  and  clumsiness ;  for  you 
have  kept  him  in  his  inexperience  like  a  maiden 
in  her  maidenhood.  You  say  that  you  desired  to 
spare  him.  Nothing  of  the  kind.  You  were 
merely  jealous,  of  your  authority,  and  your  in- 
dispensability.  You  desired  fervently  that  all 
and  everybody  should  depend  on  yourself.  .  .  . 
"  Conceive  that  three  years  have  passed  and 
that  you  are  in  fact  dead.  You  are  buried;  you 
are  lying  away  over  there  in  the  cold  dark.  The 
funeral  is  done.  The  friends  are  gone.  But 
your  family  is  just  as  alive  as  ever.     Disaster  has 


72    THE  PLAIN  MAN  AND  HIS  WIFE 

not  killed  it,  nor  even  diminished  its  vitality. 
It  wants  just  as  much  to  eat  and  drink  as  it  did 
before  sorrow  passed  over  it.  Look  through  the 
sod.  Do  you  see  that  child  there  playing  with  a 
razor?  It  is  your  eldest  son  at  grips  with  your 
business.  Do  you  see  that  other  youngster  striv- 
ing against  a  wolf  with  a  lead  pencil  for  weapon? 
It  is  your  second  son.  Well,  they  are  males, 
these  two,  and  must  manfully  expect  what  they 
get.  But  do  you  see  these  four  creatures  with 
their  hands  cut  off,  thrust  out  into  the  infested 
desert?  They  are  your  wife  and  your  daughters. 
You  cut  their  hands  off.  You  did  it  so  kindly 
and  persuasively.  And  that  chiefly  is  why  you 
are  a  scoundrel.  .  .  . 

"  You  educated  all  these  women  in  a  false  and 
abominable  doctrine.  You  made  them  believe, 
and  you  forced  them  to  act  up  to  the  belief,  that 
money  was  a  magic  thing,  and  that  they  had  a 
magic  power  over  it.  All  they  had  to  do  was  to 
press  a  certain  button,  or  to  employ  a  certain 
pretty  tone,  and  money  would  flow  forth  like 
water  from  the  rock  of  Moses.  And  so  far  as 
they  were  concerned  money  actually  did  behave 
in  this  convenient  fashion. 

"  But  all  the  time  you  were  deceiving  them 


THE  RISKS  OF  LIFE  73 

by  a  conjuring-trick,  just  as  priests  of  strange 
cults  deceive  their  votaries.  .  .  .  And  further, 
you  taught  them  that  money  had  but  one  use  — 
to  be  spent.  You  may  —  though  by  a  fluke  — 
have  left  a  quantity  of  money  to  your  widow, 
but  her  sole  skill  is  to  spend  it.  She  has  heard 
that  there  is  such  a  thing  as  investing  money. 
She  tries  to  invest  it.  But,  bless  you,  you  never 
said  a  word  to  her  about  that,  and  the  money 
vanishes  now  as  magically  as  it  once  magically 
appeared  in  her  lap. 

"  Yes,  you  compelled  all  these  four  women 
to  live  so  that  money  and  luxury  and  servants 
and  idleness  were  absolutely  essential  to  them  if 
their  existence  was  to  be  tolerable.  And  what 
is  worse,  you  compelled  them  to  live  so  that, 
deprived  of  magic  money,  they  were  incapable  of 
existing  at  all,  tolerably  or  intolerably.  Either 
they  must  expire  in  misery  —  after  their  splen- 
did career  with  you!  —  or  they  must  earn  exist- 
ence by  smiles  and  acquiescences  and  caresses. 
(For  you  cut  their  hands  off.)  They  must  beg 
for  their  food  and  raiment.  There  are  different 
ways  of  begging. 

"  But  you  protest  that  you  did  it  out  of  kind- 
ness, and  because  you  wanted  them  to  have  a 


74     THE  PLAIN  MAN  AND  HIS  WIFE 

real  good  time.  My  good  Alpha,  it  is  absurd 
for  a  man  to  argue  that  he  cut  off  a  woman's 
hands  out  of  kindness.  Human  beings  are  so 
incredulous,  so  apt  to  think  evil,  that  such  argu- 
ments somehow  fail  to  carry  conviction.  I 
am  fairly  credulous  myself,  but  even  I  de- 
cline to  accept  the  plea.  And  I  say  that 
if  your  conduct  was  meant  kindly,  it  is  a  pity 
that  you  weren't  born  cruel.  Cruelty  would 
have  been  better.  Was  it  out  of  kindness  that 
you  refused  to  allow  your  youngest  to  acquire 
the  skill  to  earn  her  own  living?  Was  it  out 
of  kindness  that  you  thwarted  her  instinct  and 
filled  her  soul  with  regret  that  may  be  eternal? 
It  was  not.  I  have  already  indicated,  in  speak- 
ing of  your  son,  one  of  the  real  reasons.  An- 
other was  that  you  took  pride  in  having  these 
purely  ornamental  and  loving  creatures  about 
you,  and  you  would  not  suffer  them  to  have 
an  interest  stronger  than  their  interest  in  you, 
or  a  function  other  than  the  function  of  com- 
pleting your  career  and  illustrating  your  suc- 
cess in  the  world.  If  the  girl  was  to  play  the 
piano,  she  was  to  play  it  in  order  to  perfect 
your  home  and  minister  to  your  pleasure  and 
your  vanity,  and  for  naught  else.     You  got  what 


THE  RISKS  OF  LIFE  75 

you  wanted,  and  you  infamously  shut  your  eyes 
to  the  risks. 

"  I  hear  you  expostulate  that  you  didn't  shut 
your  eyes  to  the  risks,  and  that  there  will  al- 
ways be  risks,  and  that  it  is  impossible  to  pro- 
vide fully  against  all  of  them. 

"  Which  is  true,  or  half  true,  and  the  truth 
or  half-truth  of  the  statement  only  renders  your 
case  the  blacker,  O  Alpha!  Risks  are  an  inevi- 
table part  of  life.  They  are  part  of  the  fine  savour 
and  burden  of  life,  and  without  the  sense  of 
them  life  is  flat  and  tasteless.  And  yet  you 
feigned  to  your  women  that  risk  was  eliminated 
from  the  magic  world  in  which  you  had  put 
them.  You  deliberately  deprived  them  of  the 
most  valuable  factor  in  existence  —  genuine  re- 
sponsibility. You  made  them  ridiculous  in  the 
esteem  of  all  persons  with  a  just  perception  of 
values.  You  slowly  bled  them  of  their  self- 
respect.  Had  you  been  less  egotistic,  they 
might  have  been  happier,  even  during  your  life- 
time. Your  wife  would  have  been  happier  had 
she  been  permitted  or  compelled  to  feel  the 
weight  of  the  estate  and  to  share  understand- 
ing^ the  anxieties  of  your  wonderful  business. 
Your  girls  would  have  been  happier  had  they 


76     THE  PLAIN  MAN  AND  HIS  WIFE 

been  cast  forcibly  out  of  the  magic  world  into 
the  real  world  for  a  few  hours  every  day  during 
a  few  years  in  order  to  learn  its  geography,  and 
its  customs,  and  the  terms  on  which  food  and 
raiment  and  respect  can  be  obtained  in  it,  and 
the  ability  to  obtain  them.  And  so  would  you 
have  been  happier,  fool!  You  sent  your  girls 
on  the  grand  tour,  but  you  didn't  send  them  into 
the  real  world. 

"  Alpha,  the  man  who  cuts  off  another  man's 
hands  is  a  ruffian.  The  man  who  cuts  off  a 
woman's  hands  is  a  scoundrel.  There  is  no  ex- 
cuse for  him  —  none  whatever.  And  the  kinder 
he  is  the  worse  he  is.  I  repeat  that  you  are  the 
worst  sort  of  scoundrel.  Your  family  mourns 
you,  and  every  member  of  it  says  what  an  angel 
of  a  father  you  were.  But  you  were  a  scoundrel 
all  the  same.  And  at  heart  every  member  of  the 
family  knows  it  and  admits  it.  Which  is  rather 
distressing.  And  there  are  thousands  just  like 
you,  Alpha.  Yes,  even  in  England  there  are 
tens  of  thousands  just  like  you.  .  .  . 

"  But  you  aren't  dead  yet.  I  was  only  ask- 
ing you  to  conceive  that  you  were. 

"  Believe  me,  my  dear  Alpha, 

"  Yours  affectionately." 


THE  RISKS  OF  LIFE  77 

A  long  and  violent  epistle  perhaps.  You  in- 
quire in  what  spirit  Alpha  received  it.  The 
truth  is,  he  never  did  receive  it. 


78     THE  PLAIN  MAN  AND  HIS  WIFE 


IV 

You  naturally  assume  that  before  the  let- 
ter could  reach  him  Alpha  had  been  mor- 
tally struck  down  by  apoplexy,  double  pneu- 
monia, bullet,  automobile,  or  some  such 
enemy  of  joy,  and  that  all  the  dreadful 
things  which  I  had  foreseen  might  happen  did  in 
fact  happen,  thus  proving  once  more  what  a 
very  wise  friend  I  was,  and  filling  me  with  justi- 
fiable pride  in  my  grief.  But  it  was  not  so. 
Alpha  was  not  struck  down,  nor  did  his  agree- 
able house  topple  over  the  metaphorical  preci- 
pice. According  to  poetical  justice  he  ought  to 
have  been  struck  down,  just  to  serve  him  right, 
and  as  a  warning  to  others  —  only  he  was  not. 
Not  merely  the  wicked,  but  the  improvident  and 
the  negligent,  often  flourish  like  the  green  bay 
tree,  and  they  keep  on  flourishing,  and  setting 
wisdom  and  righteousness  at  defiance  in  the  most 
successful  manner.  Which,  indeed,  makes  the 
life  of  a  philosopher  and  sagacious  adviser  ex- 
tremely difficult  and  ungrateful. 


THE  RISKS  OF  LIFE  79 

Alpha  never  received  my  letter  because  I  never 
sent  it.  There  are  letters  which  one  writes,  not  to 
send,  but  to  ease  one's  mind.  This  letter  was 
one  of  them.  It  would  not  have  been  proper  to 
dispatch  such  a  letter.  Moreover,  in  the  duties 
of  friendship,  as  distinguished  from  the  pleasures 
of  friendship,  speech  is  better,  bolder,  surer  than 
writing.  When  two  friends  within  hailing  dis- 
tance of  each  other  get  to  exchanging  epistles  in 
order  to  settle  a  serious  difference  of  opinion, 
the  peril  to  their  friendship  is  indeed  grave ;  and 
the  peril  is  intensified  when  one  of  them  has 
adopted  a  superior  moral  attitude  —  as  I  had. 
The  letters  grow  longer  and  longer,  ■  ruder  and 
ruder,  and  the  probability  of  the  friendship  sur- 
viving grows  ever  rapidly  less  and  less.  It  is  — 
usually,  though  not  always  —  a  mean  act  to  write 
what  you  have  not  the  pluck  to  say. 

So  I  just  kept  the  letter  as  a  specimen  of 
what  I  could  do  —  if  I  chose  —  in  the  high  role 
of  candid  friend. 

I  said  to  myself  that  I  would  take  the  first 
favourable  occasion  to  hint  to  Mr.  Alpha  how 
profoundly,  etc.,  etc. 

The  occasion  arrived  sooner  than  I  had  feared. 
Alpha  had  an  illness.     It  was  not  alarming,  and 


80    THE  PLAIN  MAN  AND  HIS  WIFE 

yet  it  was  sufficiently  formidable.  It  began  with 
colitis,  and  ended  with  appendicitis  and  an  opera- 
tion. Soon  after  Alpha  had  risen  from  his  bed 
and  was  cheerfully  but  somewhat  feebly  about 
again  I  met  him  at  a  club.  He  was  sitting  in 
an  arm-chair  in  one  of  the  huge  bay-windows 
of  the  club,  and  gazing  with  bright  interest  upon 
the  varied  spectacle  of  the  street.  The  occasion 
was  almost  ideal.  I  took  the  other  arm-chair  in 
the  semicircle  of  the  window.  I  saw  at  once  by 
his  careless  demeanour  that  his  illness  had  taught 
him  nothing,  and  I  determined  with  all  my  no- 
torious tact  and  persuasiveness  to  point  a  moral 
for  him. 

And  just  as  I  was  clearing  my  throat  to  begin 
he  exclaimed,  with  a  jerk  of  the  elbow  and  a 
benevolently  satiric  smile: 
"  See  that  girl?  " 

A  plainly-dressed  young  woman  carrying  a 
violin-case  crossed  the  street  in  front  of  our 
window. 

"I  see  her,"  said  I.    "What  about  her?" 
"  That's  Omega's  second  daughter." 
"  Oh,  Omega,"  I  murmured.     "  Haven't  seen 
him  for  ages.     What's  he  doing  with  himself? 
Do  you  ever  meet  him  nowadays?" 


THE  RISKS  OF  LIFE  81 

Said  Mr.  Alpha: 

"  I  happened  to  dine  with  him  —  it  was  chiefly 
on  business  —  a  couple  of  days  before  I  fell  ill. 
Remarkably  strange  cove,  Omega  —  remarkably 
strange." 

"Why?  How?  And  what's  the  matter  with 
the  cove's  second  daughter,  anyway?  " 

"Well,"  said  Alpha,  "it's  all  of  a  piece  — him 
and  his  second  daughter  and  the  rest  of  the 
family.  Funny  case.  It  ought  to  interest  you. 
Omega's  got  a  mania." 

"What  mania?" 

"  Not  too  easy  to  describe.  Call  it  the  pre- 
caution mania." 

"The   precaution  mania?     What's   that?" 

"  I'll  tell  you." 

And  he  told  me. 


82    THE  PLAIN  MAN  AND  HIS  WIFE 


V 

"Odd  thing,"  said  Alpha,  "that  I  should 
have  been  at  Omega's  just  as  I  was  sickening  for 
appendicitis.  He's  great  on  appendicitis,  is 
Omega." 

"  Has  he  had  it?  " 

"Not  he!  He's  never  had  anything.  But  he 
informed  me  that  before  he  went  to  Mexico  last 
year  he  took  the  precaution  of  having  his  ap- 
pendix removed,  lest  he  might  have  acute  ap- 
pendicitis in  some  wild  part  of  the  country 
where  there  might  be  no  doctor  just  handy  for 
an  operation.  He's  like  that,  you  know.  I  be- 
lieve if  he  had  his  way  there  wouldn't  be  an  ap- 
pendix left  in  the  entire  family.  He's  inoculated 
against  everything.  They're  all  inoculated 
against  everything.  And  he  keeps  an  elaborate 
medicine-chest  in  his  house,  together  with  elab- 
orate typewritten  instructions  which  he  forced 
his  doctor  to  give  him  —  in  case  anything  awful 
should  happen  suddenly.  Omega  has  only  to 
read  those  instructions,  and  he  could  stitch  a  hor- 
rible wound,  tie  up  a  severed  artery,  or  make  an 


THE  RISKS  OF  LIFE  83 

injection  of  morphia  or  salt  water.  He  has  a 
thermometer  in  every  room  and  one  in  each  bath. 
Also  burglar-alarms  at  all  doors  and  windows, 
and  fire  extinguishers  on  every  floor.  But  that's 
nothing.  You  should  hear  about  his  insurance. 
Of  course,  he's  insured  his  life  and  the  lives  of 
the  whole  family  of  them.  He's  insured  against 
railway  accidents  and  all  other  accidents,  and 
against  illness.  The  fidelity  of  all  his  clerks  is 
insured.  He's  insured  against  burglary,  natu- 
rally. Against  fire,  too.  And  against  loss  of  rent 
through  fire.  His  plate-glass  is  insured.  His 
bunch  of  keys  is  insured.  He's  insured  against 
employers'  liability.  He's  insured  against  war. 
He's  insured  against  loss  of  business  profits. 
The  interest  on  his  mortgage  securities  is  insured. 
His  wretched  little  automobile  is  insured. 
I  do  believe  he  was  once  insured  against  the  even- 
tuality of  twins." 

"  He  must  feel  safe,"  I  said. 

"  Not  the  least  bit  in  the  world,"  replied  Alpha. 
"  Life  is  a  perfect  burden  to  him.  That  wouldn't 
matter  so  much  if  he  didn't  make  it  a  perfect  bur- 
den to  all  his  family  as  well.  They've  all  got 
to  be  prepared  against  the  worst  happening.  If 
he  fell  down  dead  his  wife  would  know  just  what 


84    THE  PLAIN  MAN  AND  HIS  WIFE 

to  do.  She  knows  all  the  details  of  his  financial 
position  exactly.  She  has  to;  he  sees  to  that. 
He  keeps  her  up  to  date  in  them  every  day. 
And  she  has  to  show  him  detailed  accounts  of  the 
house  as  though  it  was  a  business  undertaking, 
because  he's  so  afraid  of  her  being  left  helpless 
and  incapable.  She  just  has  to  understand  that 
1  life  is  real,  life  is  earnest,'  and  death  more  so. 

"Then  the  children.  They're  all  insured,  of 
course.  Each  of  the  girls  has  to  take  charge  of 
the  house  in  turn.  And  they  must  all  earn  their 
own  living  —  in  case  papa  fell  down  dead. 
Take  that  second  daughter.  She  hates  music, 
but  she  has  a  certain  mechanical  facility  with  the 
fiddle,  and  so  she  must  turn  it  into  coin,  in  order 
to  be  on  the  safe  side.  Her  instincts  are  for  fine 
clothes,  idleness,  and  responsibility.  She'd  take 
the  risks  cheerfully  enough  if  he'd  let  her.  But 
he  won't.  So  she's  miserable.  I  think  they  all 
are  more  or  less." 

"  But  still,"  I  put  in,  "  to  feel  the  burden  of  life 
is  not  a  bad  thing  for  people's  characters." 

"Perhaps  not,"  said  Alpha.  "But  to  be 
crushed  under  a  cartload  of  bricks  isn't  likely  to 
do  one  much  good,  is  it?  Why,  Omega's  a 
wealthy  man,  and  d'you  know,  he  must  live  on 


THE  RISKS  OF  LIFE  85 

about  a  third  of  his  income.  The  argument  is, 
as  usual,  that  he's  liable  to  fall  down  dead  — 
and  insurance  companies  are  only  human  —  and 
anyhow,  old  age  must  be  amply  provided  for. 
And  then  all  his  securities  might  fall  simultane- 
ously. And  lastly,  as  he  says,  you  never  know 
what  may  happen.     Ugh !  " 

"  Has  anything  happened  up  to  now?  " 

"  Oh,  yes.  An  appalling  disaster.  His  draw- 
ing-room hearthrug  caught  fire  six  years  ago  and 
was  utterly  ruined.  He  got  eleven  dollars  out 
of  the  insurance  company  for  that,  and  was  ec- 
statically delighted  about  it  for  three  weeks. 
Nothing  worse  ever  will  happen  to  Omega.  His 
business  is  one  of  the  safest  in  the  country.  His 
constitution  is  that  of  a  crocodile  or  a  parrot. 
And  he's  as  cute  as  they  make  'em." 

"  And  I  suppose  you  don't  envy  him?  " 

"  I  don't,"  said  Alpha. 

"  Well,"  I  ventured,  "  let  me  offer  you  a  piece 
of  advice.  Never  travel  in  the  same  train  with 
Mr.  Omega." 

"  Never  travel  in  the  same  train  with  him? 
Why  not?  " 

"  Because  if  there  were  a  railway  accident,  and 
you  were  both  killed  on  the  spot,  the  world  might 


86     THE  PLAIN  MAN  AND  HIS  WIFE 

draw  comparisons  between  the  effect  on  your 
family  and  the  effect  on  his,  and  your  family 
wouldn't  like  it." 

We  remained  silent  for  a  space,  and  the  silence 
was  dramatic.  Nervously,  I  looked  out  of  the 
window. 

At  length  Alpha  said : 

"  I  suppose  there  is  such  a  thing  as  the  happy 
medium.,, 

"  Good-bye,  Alpha."  I  rose  abruptly.  "  Sorry, 
but  I've  got  to  go  at  once." 

And  I  judiciously  departed. 


IV 
IN  HER  PLACE 

I 

THE  plain  man  is  not  always  mature  and 
successful,  as  I  have  hitherto  regarded 
him.  He  may  be  unsuccessful  in  a 
worldly  sense ;  but  from  my  present  point  of  view 
I  do  not  much  care  whether  he  is  unsuccessful  in 
that  sense.  I  know  that  plain  men  are  seldom  fail- 
ures; their  very  plainness  saves  them  from  the 
alarming  picturesqueness  of  the  abject  failure. 
On  the  other  hand,  I  care  greatly  whether  the 
plain  man  is  mature  or  immature,  old  or  young. 
I  should  prefer  to  catch  him  young.  But  he  is 
difficult  to  catch  young.  The  fact  is  that,  just 
as  he  is  seldom  a  failure,  so  he  is  seldom  young. 
He  becomes  plain  only  with  years.  In  youth, 
even  in  the  thirties,  he  has  fanciful  capricious 
qualities  which  prevent  him  from  being  classed 
with  the  average  sagacious  plain  man.  He 
slowly   loses   these   inconvenient  qualities,   and 

87 


88    THE  PLAIN  MAN  AND  HIS  WIFE 

develops  into  part  of  the  backbone  of  the  nation. 
And  then  it  is  too  late  to  tell  him  that\he  is  not 
perfect,  simply  because  he  has  forgotten  to  cul- 
tivate the  master  quality  of  all  qualities  — 
namely,  imagination.  For  imagination  must  be 
cultivated  early,  and  it  is  just  the  quality  that 
these  admirable  plain  men  lack. 

By  imagination  I  mean  the  power  to  conceive 
oneself  in  a  situation  which  one  is  not  actually 
in;  for  instance,  in  another  person's  place.  It 
is  among  the  sardonic  humours  of  destiny  that 
imagination,  while  positively  dangerous  in  an  ill- 
balanced  mind  and  of  the  highest  value  in  a 
well-balanced  mind,  is  to  be  found  rather  in  the 
former  than  in  the  latter.  And  anyhow,  the 
quality  is  rare  in  Anglo-Saxon  races,  which  are 
indeed  both  afraid  and  ashamed  of  it. 

And  yet  could  the  plain,  the  well-balanced 
Anglo-Saxon  male  acquire  it,  what  a  grand 
world  we  should  live  in!  The  most  important 
thing  in  the  world  would  be  transformed.  The 
most  important  thing  in  the  world  is,  ultimately, 
married  life,  and  the  chief  practical  use  of  the 
quality  of  imagination  is  to  ameliorate  married 
life.  But  who  in  England  or  America  (or  else- 
where)   thinks   of  it  in   that   connection?    The 


IN  HER  PLACE  89 

plain  man  considers  that  imagination  is  all  very 
well  for  poets  and  novelists.  Blockhead!  Yes, 
despite  my  high  esteem  for  him,  I  will  apply  to 
him  the  Johnsonian  term  of  abuse.  Blockhead! 
Imagination  is  super-eminently  for  himself,  and 
was  beyond  doubt  invented  by  Providence  in 
order  that  the  plain  man  might  chiefly  exercise  it 
in  the  plain,  drudging  dailiness  of  married  life. 
The  day  cometh,  if  tardily,  when  he  will  do  so. 


go    THE  PLAIN  MAN  AND  HIS  WIFE 


II 

These  reflections  have  surged  up  in  my 
brain  as  I  contemplate  the  recent  case  of 
my  acquaintance,  Mr.  Omicron,  and  they  are 
preliminary  to  a  study  of  that  interesting  case. 
Scarce  a  week  ago  Omicron  was  sitting  in  the 
Omicron  drawing-room  alone  with  Mrs.  Omi- 
cron. It  was  an  average  Omicron  evening. 
Omicron  is  aged  thirty-two.  He  is  neither  suc- 
cessful nor  unsuccessful,  and  no  human  per- 
spicacity can  say  whether  twenty  years  hence 
he  will  be  successful  or  unsuccessful.  But  any- 
body can  see  that  he  is  already  on  the  way  to  be 
a  plain,  well-balanced  man.  Somewhat  earlier 
than  usual  he  is  losing  the  fanciful  capricious 
qualities  and  settling  down  into  the  stiff  back- 
bone of  the  nation. 

Conversation  was  not  abundant. 

Said  Mrs.  Omicron  suddenly,  with  an  ingrati- 
ating accent: 

"What  about  that  ring  that  I  was  to  have?" 

There  was  a  pause,  in  which  every  muscle  of 
the  man's  body,  and  especially  the  facial  muscles, 


IN  HER  PLACE  91 

and  every  secret  fibre  of  his  soul,  perceptibly 
stiffened.  And  then  Omicron  answered,  curtly, 
rebuttingly,  reprovingly,  snappishly,  finishingly: 

"  I  don't  know." 

And  took  up  his  newspaper,  whose  fragile 
crackling  wall  defended  him  from  attack  every 
bit  as  well  as  a  screen  of  twelve-inch  armour- 
plating. 

The  subject  was  dropped. 

It  had  endured  about  ten  seconds.  But  those 
ten  seconds  marked  an  epoch  in  Omicron's  career 
as  a  husband  —  and  he  knew  it  not.  He  knew 
it  not,  but  the  whole  of  his  conjugal  future  had 
hung  evenly  in  the  balance  during  those  ten 
seconds,  and  then  slid  slightly  but  definitely  — 
to  the  wrong  side. 

Of  course,  there  was  more  in  the  affair  than 
appeared  on  the  surface.  At  dinner  the  other- 
wise excellent  leg  of  mutton  had  proved  on  cut- 
ting to  be  most  noticeably  underdone.  Now,  it 
is  a  monstrous  shame  that  first-class  mutton 
should  be  wasted  through  inefficient  cookery; 
with  third-class  mutton  the  crime  might  have 
been  deemed  less  awful.  Moreover,  four  days 
previously  another  excellent  dish  had  been  ren- 
dered unfit  for  masculine  consumption  by  pre- 


92    THE  PLAIN  MAN  AND  HIS  WIFE 

cisely  the  same  inefficiency  or  gross  negligence, 
or  whatever  one  likes  to  call  it.  Nor  was  that 
all.  The  coffee  had  been  thin,  feeble,  uninterest- 
ing. The  feminine  excuse  for  this  last  diabolic 
iniquity  had  been  that  the  kitchen  at  the  last  mo- 
ment had  discovered  itself  to  be  short  of  cof- 
fee. An  entirely  commonplace  episode!  Yes, 
but  it  is  out  of  commonplace  episodes  that  mar- 
tyrs are  made,  and  Omicron  had  been  made  a 
martyr.  He,  if  none  else,  was  fully  aware  that 
evening  that  he  was  a  martyr.  And  the  woman 
had  selected  just  that  evening  to  raise  the  ques- 
tion of  rings,  gauds,  futile  ornamentations!  He 
had  said  little.  But  he  had  stood  for  the  uni- 
versal husband,  and  in  Mrs.  Omicron  he  saw  the 
universal  wife. 


IN  HER  PLACE  93 


III 

His  reflections  ran  somewhat  thus: 
"  Surely  a  simple  matter  to  keep  enough 
coffee  in  the  house!  A  schoolgirl  could  do 
it!  And  yet  they  let  themselves  run  short  of 
coffee!  I  ask  for  nothing  out  of  the  way.  I 
make  no  inordinate  demands  on  the  household. 
But  I  do  like  good  coffee.  And  I  can't  have  it! 
Strange!  As  for  that  mutton  —  one  would 
think  there  was  no  clock  in  the  kitchen.  One 
would  think  that  nobody  had  ever  cooked  a  leg 
of  mutton  before.  How  many  legs  of  mutton 
have  they  cooked  between  them  in  their  lives? 
Scores;  hundreds;  I  dare  say  thousands.  And 
yet  it  hasn't  yet  dawned  on  them  that  a  leg  of 
mutton  of  a  certain  weight  requires  a  certain 
time  for  cooking,  and  that  if  it  is  put  down  late 
one  of  two  things  must  occur  —  either  it  will  be 
undercooked  or  the  dinner  will  be  late!  Simple 
enough!  Logical  enough!  Four  women  in  the 
house  (three  servants  and  the  wicked,  negligent 
Mrs.  Omicron),  and  yet  they  must  needs  waste 


94    THE  PLAIN  MAN  AND  HIS  WIFE 

a  leg  of  mutton  through  nothing  but  gross  care- 
lessness! It  isn't  as  if  it  hadn't  happened  be- 
fore !  It  isn't  as  if  I  hadn't  pointed  it  out !  But 
women  are  amateurs.  All  women  are  alike.  All 
housekeeping  is  amateurish.  She  (Mrs.  Omi- 
cron,  the  criminal)  has  nothing  in  this  world  to 
do  but  run  the  house  —  and  see  how  she  runs  it ! 
No  order!  No  method!  Has  she  ever  studied 
housekeeping  scientifically?  Not  she!  Does  she 
care?  Not  she!  If  she  had  any  real  sense  of  re- 
sponsibility, if  she  had  the  slightest  glimmering 
of  her  own  short-comings,  she  wouldn't  have 
started  on  the  ring  question.  But  there  you  are! 
She  only  thinks  of  spending,  and  titivating  her- 
self. I  wish  she  had  to  do  a  little  earning.  She'd 
find  out  a  thing  or  two  then.  She'd  find  out 
that  life  isn't  all  moonstones  and  motor-cars. 
Ring,  indeed!  It's  the  lack  of  tact  that  annoys 
me.  I  am  an  ill-used  man.  All  husbands  are  ill- 
used  men.  The  whole  system  wants  altering. 
However,  I  must  keep  my  end  up.  And  I  will 
keep  my  end  up.     Ring,  indeed!     No  tact!  " 

He  fostered  a  secret  fury.  And  he  enjoyed 
fostering  it.  There  was  exaggeration  in  these 
thoughts,  which,  he  would  admit  next  day,  were 
possibly   too   sweeping   in   their   scope.     But   he 


IN  HER  PLACE  95 

would  maintain  the  essential  truth  of  them.  He 
was  not  really  and  effectively  furious  against 
Mrs.  Omicron;  he  did  not,  as  a  fact,  class  her 
with  forgers  and  drunken  chauffeurs ;  indeed,  the 
fellow  loved  her  in  his  fashion.  But  he  did  pass 
a  mature  judgment  against  her.  He  did  wrap  up 
his  grudge  in  cotton-wool  and  put  it  in  a  drawer 
and  examine  it  with  perverse  pleasure  now  and 
then.  He  did  increase  that  secretion  of  poison 
which  weakens  the  social  health  of  nine  hundred 
and  ninety-nine  in  a  thousand  married  lives  — 
however  delightful  they  may  be.  He  did  render 
more  permanent  a  noxious  habit  of  mind.  He 
did  appreciably  and  doubly  and  finally  impair 
the  conjugal  happiness  —  for  it  must  not  be  for- 
gotten that  in  creating  a  grievance  for  himself 
he  also  gave  his  wife  a  grievance.  He  did,  in 
fine,  contribute  to  the  general  mass  of  misunder- 
standing between  sex  and  sex. 

If  he  is  reading  this,  as  he  assuredly  is,  Mr. 
Omicron  will  up  and  exclaim: 

"  My  wife  a  grievance !  Absurd !  The  facts 
are  incontrovertible.  What  grievance  can  she 
have?" 

The  grievance  that  Mr.  Omicron,  becoming 
every  day  more  and  more  the  plain  man,  is  not 


g6    THE  PLAIN  MAN  AND  HIS  WIFE 

exercising  imagination  in  the  very  field  where 
it  is  most  needed. 

What  is  a  home,  Mr.  Omicron?  You  reply 
that  a  home  is  a  home.  You  have  always  had 
a  home.  You  were  born  in  one.  With  luck  you 
will  die  in  one.  And  you  have  never  regarded  a 
home  as  anything  but  a  home.  Your  leading 
idea  has  ever  been  that  a  home  is  emphatically 
not  an  office  nor  a  manufactory.  But  suppose 
you  were  to  unscale  your  eyes  —  that  is  to  say, 
use  your  imagination  —  try  to  see  that  a  home, 
in  addition  to  being  a  home,  is  an  office  and  man- 
ufactory for  the  supply  of  light,  warmth,  cleanli- 
ness, ease,  and  food  to  a  given  number  of  people? 
Suppose  you  were  to  allow  it  to  occur  to  you 
that  a  home  emphatically  is  an  organization  simi- 
lar to  an  office  and  manufactory  —  and  an  ex- 
tremely complicated  and  delicate  one,  with  many 
diverse  departments,  functioning  under  extremely 
difficult  conditions?  For  thus  it  in  truth  is. 
Could  you  once  accomplish  this  feat  of  imagi- 
native faculty,  you  would  never  again  say,  with 
that  disdainful  accent  of  yours:  "  Mrs.  Omicron 
has  nothing  in  the  world  to  do  but  run  the 
house."    For  really  it  would  be  just  as  clever  for 


IN  HER  PLACE  97 

her  to  say :     "  Mr.  Omicron  has  nothing  in  the 
world  to  do  but  nan  the  office." 

I  admit  heartily  that  Mrs.  Omicron  is  not  per- 
fect. She  ought  to  be,  of  course;  but  she,  alas! 
falls  short  of  the  ideal.  Yet  in  some  details  she 
can  and  does  show  the  way  to  that  archangel, 
her  husband.  When  her  office  and  manufactory 
goes  wrong,  you,  Mr.  Omicron,  are  righteously 
indignant  and  superior.  You  majestically 
wonder  that  with  four  women  in  the  house,  etc., 
etc.  But  when  you  come  home  and  complain 
that  things  are  askew  in  your  masculine  estab- 
lishment, and  that  a  period  of  economy  must  set 
in,  does  she  say  to  you  with  scorn :  "  Don't 
dare  to  mention  coffee  to-night.  I  really  wonder 
that  with  fourteen  (or  a  hundred  and  forty) 
grown  men  in  your  establishment  you  cannot 
produce  an  ample  and  regular  income? "  No; 
she  makes  the  best  of  it.  She  is  sympathetic. 
And  you,  Mr.  Omicron,  would  be  excessively 
startled  and  wounded  if  she  were  not  sympa- 
thetic. Put  your  imagination  to  work  and  you 
will  see  how  interesting  are  these  comparisons. 


98    THE  PLAIN  MAN  AND  HIS  WIFE 


IV 

She  is  an  amateur  at  her  business,  you  say. 
Well,  perhaps  she  is.  But  who  brought  her 
up  to  be  an  amateur?  Are  you  not  content 
to  carry  on  the  ancient  tradition?  As  you  medi- 
tate, and  you  often  do  meditate,  upon  that  in- 
fant daughter  of  yours  now  sleeping  in  her  cot, 
do  you  dream  of  giving  her  a  scientific  education 
in  housekeeping,  or  do  you  dream  of  endowing 
her  with  the  charms  that  music  and  foreign 
languages  and  physical  grace  can  offer?  Do  you 
in  your  mind's  eye  see  her  cannily  choosing  beef 
at  the  butcher's,  or  shining  for  your  pleasure  in 
the  drawing-room? 

And  then  Mrs.  Omicron  is,  perhaps,  not  so 
much  of  an  amateur  as  you  assume.  People 
learn  by  practice.  Is  there  any  reason  in  human 
nature  why  a  complex  machine  such  as  a  house 
may  be  worked  with  fewer  breakdowns  than  an 
office  or  manufactory?  Harness  your  imagina- 
tion once  more  and  transfer  to  your  house  the 
multitudinous  minor  catastrophes  that  happen  in 
your  office.    Be  sincere,  and  admit  that  the  ef- 


IN  HER  PLACE  99 

ficiency  of  the  average  office  is  naught  but  a 
pretty  legend.  A  mistake  or  negligence  or  for- 
getfulness  in  an  office  is  remedied  and  forgotten. 
Mrs.  Omicron  —  my  dear  Mr.  Omicron  —  never 
hears  of  it.  Not  so  with  Mrs.  Omicron's  office,  as 
your  aroused  imagination  will  tell  you.  Mrs. 
Omicron's  parlourmaid's  duster  fails  to  make 
contact  with  one  small  portion  of  the  hall-table. 
Mr.  Omicron  walks  in,  and  his  godlike  glance 
drops  instantly  on  the  dusty  place,  and  Mr.  Omi- 
cron ejaculates  sardonically :  "  H'm !  Four 
women  in  the  house,  and  they  can't  even  keep 
the  hall-table  respectable !  " 

Mr.  Omicron  forgets  a  letter  at  the  bottom  of 
his  unanswered-letter  basket,  and  a  week  later 
an  excited  cable  arrives  from  overseas,  and  that 
cable  demands  another  cable.  No  real  harm  has 
been  done.  Ten  dollars  spent  on  cables  have 
cured  the  ill.  Mrs.  Omicron,  preoccupied  with 
a  rash  on  the  back  of  the  neck  of  Miss  Omicron 
before-mentioned,  actually  comes  back  from 
town  without  having  ordered  the  mutton.  In 
the  afternoon  she  realizes  her  horrid  sin  and 
rushes  to  the  telephone.  The  butcher  reassures 
her.  He  swears  the  desired  leg  shall  arrive.  But 
do  you  see  that  boy  dallying  at  the  street  corner 


ioo     THE  PLAIN  MAN  AND  HIS  WIFE 

with  his  mate?  He  carries  the  leg  of  mutton, 
and  he  carries  also,  though  he  knows  it  not  nor 
cares,  the  reputation  and  happiness  of  Mrs. 
Omicron.  He  is  late.  As  you  yourself  re- 
marked, Mr.  Omicron,  if  a  leg  of  mutton  is  put 
down  late  to  roast,  one  of  two  things  must  occur 
—  either  it  will  be  under-cooked  or  the  dinner 
will  be  late. 

Now,  if  housekeeping  was  as  simple  as  office- 
keeping,  Mrs.  Omicron  would  smile  in  tranquil- 
lity at  the  contretemps,  and  say  to  herself: 
"  Never  mind,  I  shall  pay  the  late-posting  fee  — 
that  will  give  me  an  extra  forty  minutes."  You 
say  that,  Mr.  Omicron,  about  your  letters,  when 
you  happen  to  have  taken  three  hours  for  lunch 
and  your  dictation  of  correspondence  is  thereby 
postponed.  Only  there  is  no  late-posting  fee  in 
Mrs.  Omicron's  world.  If  Mrs.  Omicron  flung 
four  cents  at  you  when  you  came  home,  and  in- 
formed you  that  dinner  would  be  forty  minutes 
late  and  that  she  was  paying  the  fee,  what,  Mr. 
Omicron,  would  be  your  state  of  mind? 

And  your  imagination,  now  very  alert,  will 
carry  you  even  farther  than  this,  Mr.  Omicron, 
and  disclose  to  you  still  more  fearful  difficulties 
which  Mrs.  Omicron  has  to  face  in  the  manage- 


IN  HER  PLACE  101 

ment  of  her  office  or  manufactory.  Her  staff  is 
uneducated,  less  educated  even  than  yours.  And 
her  staff  is  universally  characterized  by  certain 
peculiarities  of  mentality.  For  example,  her 
staff  will  never,  never,  never,  come  and  say  to 
her :  "  Please,  ma'am,  there  is  only  enough  cof- 
fee left  for  two  days."  No!  Her  staff  will 
placidly  wait  forty-eight  hours,  and  then  come 
at  7  p.  m  and  say :     "  Please,  ma'am,  there  isn't 

enough     coffee "     And     worse!     You,     Mr. 

Omicron,  can  say  roundly  to  a  clerk :  "  Look 
here,  if  this  occurs  again  I  shall  fling  you  into 
the  street."  You  are  aware,  and  he  is  aware, 
that  a  hundred  clerks  are  waiting  to  take  his 
place.  On  the  other  hand,  a  hundred  mistresses 
are  waiting  to  take  the  place  of  Mrs.  Omicron 
with  regard  to  her  cook.  Mrs.  Omicron  has  to 
do  as  best  she  can.  She  has  to  speak  softly  and 
to  temper  discipline,  because  the  supply  of  do- 
mestic servants  is  unequal  to  the  demand.  And 
there  is  still  worse.  The  worst  of  all,  the  su- 
preme disadvantage  under  which  Mrs.  Omicron 
suffers,  is  that  most  of  her  errors,  lapses,  crimes, 
directly  affect  a  man  in  the  stomach,  and  the  man 
is  a  hungry  man. 

Mr.   Omicron,  your   imagination,   now   fever- 


102     THE  PLAIN  MAN  AND  HIS  WIFE 

ishly  active,  will  thus  demonstrate  to  you  that 
your  wife's  earthly  lot  is  not  the  velvet  couch 
that  you  had  unimaginatively  assumed  it  to  be, 
and  that,  indeed,  you  would  not  change  places 
with  her  for  a  hundred  thousand  a  year.  Your 
attitude  towards  her  human  limitations  will  be 
modified,  and  the  general  mass  of  misunder- 
standing between  sex  and  sex  will  tend  to  di- 
minish. 

(And  if  even  yet  your  attitude  is  not  modified, 
let  your  imagination  dwell  for  a  few  instants  on 
the  extraordinary  number  of  bad  and  expensive 
hotels  with  which  you  are  acquainted  —  man- 
aged, not  by  amateurish  women,  but  by  profes- 
sional men.  And  on  the  obstinate  mismanage- 
ment of  the  commissariat  of  your  own  club  —  of 
which  you  are  continually  complaining  to  mem- 
bers of  the  house-committee.) 


IN  HER  PLACE  103 


V 

I  pass  to  another  aspect  of  Mr.  Omicron's 
private  reflections  consequent  upon  Mrs.  Omi- 
cron's dreadful  failure  of  tact  in  asking 
him  about  the  ring  after  the  mutton  had  proved 
to  be  underdone  and  the  coffee  to  be  in- 
adequate. "  She  only  thinks  of  spending,"  re- 
flected Mr.  Omicron,  resentfully.  A  more  or  less 
true  reflection,  no  doubt,  but  there  would  have 
been  a  different  colour  to  it  if  Mr.  Omicron  had 
exercised  the  greatest  of  his  faculties.  Suppose 
you  were  to  unscale  your  eyes,  Mr.  Omicron  — 
that  is  to  say,  use  your  imagination  —  and  try  to 
see  that  so  far  as  finance  is  concerned  your  wife's 
chief  and  proper  occupation  in  life  is  to  spend. 
Conceive  what  you  would  say  if  she  announced 
one  morning :  "  Henry,  I  am  sick  of  spending. 
I  am  going  out  into  the  world  to  earn."  Can 
you  not  hear  yourself  employing  a  classic  phrase 
about  "the  woman's  sphere"?  In  brief,  there 
would  occur  an  altercation  and  a  shindy. 

Your    imagination,    once    set   in   motion,    will 


104     THE  PLAIN  MAN  AND  HIS  WIFE 

show  you  that  your  conjugal  existence  is  divided 
into  two  great  departments  —  the  getting  and  the 
spending  departments.  Wordsworth  chanted 
that  in  getting  and  spending  we  lay  waste  our 
powers.  We  could  not  lay  waste  our  powers  in 
a  more  satisfying  manner.  The  two  depart- 
ments, mutually  indispensable,  balance  each 
other.  You  organized  them.  You  made  your- 
self the  head  of  one  and  your  wife  the  head  of 
the  other.  You  might,  of  course,  have  organ- 
ized them  otherwise.  It  was  open  to  you 
in  the  Hottentot  style  to  decree  that  your 
wife  should  do  the  earning  while  you  did 
the  spending.  But  for  some  mysterious  reason 
this  arrangement  did  not  appeal  to  you,  and 
you  accordingly  go  forth  daily  to  the  office 
and  return  therefrom  with  money.  The  theory 
of  your  daily  excursion  is  firmly  based  in  the 
inherent  nature  of  things.  The  theory  is  the 
fundamental  cosmic  one  that  money  is  made  in 
order  that  money  may  be  spent  —  either  at  once 
or  later.  Even  the  miser  conforms  to  this  theory, 
for  he  only  saves  in  obedience  to  the  argument 
that  the  need  of  spending  in  the  future  may  be 
more  imperious  than  is  the  need  of  spending  at 
the  moment. 


IN  HER  PLACE  105 

The  whole  of  your  own  personal  activity  is  a 
mere  preliminary  to  the  activity  of  Mrs.  Omi- 
cron.  Without  hers,  yours  would  be  absurd,  ri- 
diculous, futile,  supremely  silly.  By  spending 
she  completes  and  justifies  your  labour;  she 
crowns  your  life  by  spending.  You  married  her 
so  that  she  might  spend.  You  wanted  some  one 
to  spend,  and  it  was  understood  that  she  should 
fill  the  situation.  She  was  brought  up  to  spend, 
and  you  knew  that  she  was  brought  up  to  spend. 
Spending  is  her  vocation.  And  yet  you  turn 
round  on  her  and  complain,  "  She  only  thinks  of 
spending." 

"  Yes,"  you  say,  "  but  there  is  such  a  thing  as 
moderation."  There  is;  I  admit  it.  The  word 
"  extravagance  "  is  no  idle  word  in  the  English 
language.  It  describes  a  quality  which  exists. 
Let  it  be  an  axiom  that  Mrs.  Omicron  is  human. 
Just  as  the  tendency  to  get  may  grow  on  you, 
until  you  become  a  rapacious  and  stingy  money- 
grubber,  so  the  tendency  to  spend  may  grow  on 
her.  One  has  known  instances.  A  check-action 
must  be  occasionally  employed.  Agreed!  But, 
Mr.  Omicron,  you  should  choose  a  time  and  a 
tone  for  employing  it  other  than  you  chose  on 
this  evening  that  I  have  described.     A  man  who 


io6     THE  PLAIN  MAN  AND  HIS  WIFE 

mixes  up  jewelled  rings  with  undertone  mutton 
and  feeble  coffee  is  a  clumsy  man. 

Exercise  your  imagination  to  put  yourself  in 
the  place  of  Mrs.  Omicron,  and  you  will  perceive 
that  she  is  constantly  in  the  highly  delicate  diffi- 
culty of  having  to  ask  for  money,  or  at  any  rate 
of  having  to  suggest  or  insinuate  that  money 
should  be  given  to  her.  It  is  her  right  and  even 
her  duty  to  ask  for  money,  but  the  foolish,  illogi- 
cal creature  —  like  most  women,  even  those  with 
generous  and  polite  husbands  —  regards  the  pro- 
cess as  a  little  humiliating  for  herself.  You,  Mr. 
Omicron,  have  perhaps  never  asked  for  money. 
But  your  imagination  will  probably  be  able  to 
make  you  feel  how  it  feels  to  ask  for  money.  A 
woman  whose  business  in  life  it  is  to  spend 
money  which  she  does  not  and  cannot  earn  may 
sometimes  have  to  face  a  refusal  when  she  asks 
for  money.  But  there  is  one  thing  from  which 
she  ought  to  be  absolutely  and  eternally  safe  — 
and  that  is  a  snub. 


IN  HER  PLACE  107 


VI 

And  finally,  in  his  reflections  as  an  ill-used  man 
tied  for  life  to  a  woman  who  knows  not  tact,  Mr. 
Omicron  asserted  further  that  Mrs.  Omicron  only 
thought  of  spending  and  titivating  herself.  To 
assert  that  she  only  thought  of  spending  did  not 
satisfy  his  spleen ;  he  must  add  "  titivating  her- 
self." He  would  admit,  of  course,  that  she  did 
as  a  fact  sometimes  think  of  other  matters,  but 
still  he  would  uphold  the  gravamen  of  his  charge. 
And  yet  —  excellent  Omicron !  —  you  have  but  to 
look  the  truth  in  the  face  —  as  a  plain  common- 
sense  man  will  —  and  to  use  your  imagination,  in 
order  to  perceive  that  there  really  is  no  grava- 
men in  the  charge. 

Why  did  you  insist  on  marrying  Mrs.  Omi- 
cron? She  had  the  reputation  of  being  a  good 
housekeeper  (as  girls  go)  ;  she  was  a  serious  girl, 
kind-hearted,  of  irreproachable  family,  having 
agreeable  financial  expectations,  clever,  well-edu- 
cated, good-tempered,  pretty.  But  the  truth  is 
that  you  married  her  for  none  of  these  attributes. 


108     THE  PLAIN  MAN  AND  HIS  WIFE 

You  married  her  because  you  were  attracted  to 
her;  and  what  attracted  you  was  a  mysterious, 
never-to-be-defined  quality  about  her  —  an  efflu- 
ence, an  emanation,  a  lurking  radiance,  an  en- 
tirely enigmatic  charm.  In  the  end  "  charm  "  is 
the  one  word  that  even  roughly  indicates  that  ele- 
ment in  her  personality  which  caused  you  to  lose 
your  head  about  her.  A  similar  phenomenon  is 
to  be  observed  in  all  marriages  of  inclination.  A 
similar  phenomenon  is  at  the  bottom  of  most 
social  movements.  Why,  the  Men's  League  for 
Women's  Suffrage  itself  certainly  came  into  be- 
ing through  the  strange  workings  of  that  same 
phenomenon!  You  married  Mrs.  Omicron 
doubtless  because  she  was  "  suitable,"  but  her 
"  suitability,"  for  you,  consisted  in  the  way  she 
breathed,  the  way  she  crossed  a  room,  a  transient 
gesture,  a  vibration  in  her  voice,  a  blush,  a  glance, 
the  curve  of  an  arm  —  nothing,  nothing  —  and 
yet  everything ! 

You  may  condescend  towards  this  quality  of 
hers,  Mr.  Omicron  —  you  may  try  to  dismiss  it 
as  "  feminine  charm,"  and  have  done  with  it. 
But  you  cannot  have  done  with  it.  And 
the  fact  will  ever  remain  that  you  are  inca- 
pable of  supplying  it  yourself,  with  all  your  tal- 


IN  HER  PLACE  109 

ents  and  your  divine  common  sense.  You  are  an 
extremely  wise  and  good  man,  but  you  cannot 
ravish  the  senses  of  a  roomful  of  people  by  merely 
walking  downstairs,  by  merely  throwing  a  shawl 
over  your  shoulders,  by  a  curious  depression  in 
the  corner  of  one  cheek.  This  gift  of  grace  is  not 
yours.  Wise  as  you  are,  you  will  be  still  wiser 
if  you  do  not  treat  it  disdainfully.  It  is  among 
the  supreme  things  in  the  world.  It  has  made  a 
mighty  lot  of  history,  and  not  improbably  will 
make  some  more  —  even  yours. 

You  were  not  the  only  person  aware  of  the 
formidable  power  (for  formidable  it  was)  which 
she  possessed  over  you.  She,  too,  was  aware  of 
it,  and  is  still.  She  knows  that  when  she  exists 
in  a  particular  way,  she  will  produce  in  your  ex- 
istence a  sensation  which,  though  fleeting,  you 
prefer  to  all  other  sensations  —  a  sensation 
unique.  And  this  quality  by  which  she  disturbs 
and  enchants  you  is  her  main  resource  in  the  ad- 
venture of  life.  Shall  she  not  cherish  this  qual- 
ity, adorn  it,  intensify  it?  On  the  contrary,  you 
well  know  that  you  would  be  very  upset  and 
amazed  if  Mrs.  Omicron  were  to  show  signs  of 
neglecting  this  quality  of  hers  which  yearns  for 
rings.     And,  if  you  have  ever  entered  a  necktie- 


no     THE  PLAIN  MAN  AND  HIS  WIFE 

shop  and  been  dazzled  by  the  spectacle  of  a  fine 
necktie  into  "  hanging  expense  " —  if  you  have 
been  through  this  wondrous  experience,  your 
imagination,  duly  prodded,  will  enable  you  to  put 
yourself  into  Mrs.  Omicron's  place  when  she 
mentions  the  subject  of  rings.  "  Titivating  her- 
self?" Good  heavens,  she  is  helping  the  very 
earth  to  revolve!  And  you  smote  the  defence- 
less creature  with  a  lethal  word  —  because  the 
butcher's  boy  dallied  at  a  street-corner! 

You  insinuate  that  one  frail  hand  may  carry 
too  many  rings.  You  reproduce  your  favourite 
word  "  moderation."  Mr.  Omicron,  I  take  you. 
I  agree  as  to  the  danger.  But  if  Mrs.  Omicron  is 
human,  let  us  also  bear  in  mind  the  profound 
truth  that  not  one  of  us  is  more  human  than  an- 
other. 


-j 


THE   END 


THE   NOVELS   OF   ARNOLD   BENNETT 

WHOM  GOD  HATH  JOINED: 

Price  $1.20  Net 

WHOM  GOD  HATH  JOINED  is  a  dramatic  presentation 
of  the  working  of  the  English  divorce  laws.  Their  injustice  to 
woman  has  long  been  acknowledged;  Arnold  Bennett  proves  them 
almost  as  unjust  to  man. 

The  novel  is  a  stern  morality,  with  laughter  interspersed.  It 
possesses  the  sincerity  and  vitality  which  come  of  a  careful  study  of 
the  problem. 

It  contains  passages  of  the  most  brilliant  motive  analysis  which 
have  been  written  in  recent  years.  It  presents  a  vivid  world  of  actual 
personages. 


THE  GLIMPSE: 

The  Adventures  of  a  Soul.  Price  $1.20  Net 

The  story  is  told  of  a  man  who  passed  over  to  the  Other  Side 
and  remained  there  long  enough  to  gain  a  glimpse — only  to  return 
again. 

Written  with  the  careful  realism  which  distinguishes  all  Arnold 
Bennett's  work,  it  is  curious  to  note  the  fine  use  that  he  makes  of 
his  realistic  genius  in  the  handling  of  a  visionary  situation. 


A  MAN  FROM  THE  NORTH: 

Price  $1.20  Net 

The  story  of  a  young  man  from  the  Five  Towns,  who  comes  up 
to  London  to  seek  his  fortune.  He  is  grossly  ignorant  of  life  and 
naively  curious  about  love.  This  is  the  history  of  his  adventures 
towards  love  and  of  his  enlightenment. 

All  the  loneliness,  passion  and  quenchless  curiosity  of  youth 
are  in  these  pages — and  the  magic  power  of  youth  to  wrap  about  the 
commonplace  the  cloak  of  romance. 

GEORGE    H.    DORAN    COMPANY,    Publishers 


ARNOLD     BENNETT:    PLAYS 


CUPID   AND    COMMON-SENSE: 

A  Play  in  Four  Acts,  with  a  Preface  on  the  Crisis  in  the  Theatre. 

Price  $1.00  Net 

"Cupid  and  Common-Sense"  reads  well,  and  reads  as  if  it 
would  prove  still  more  effective  and  enjoyable  when  acted. — The 
Scotsman. 

WHAT  THE  PUBLIC  WANTS:   A  Play. 

Price  $1.00  Net 
This  clever  comedy,  based  on  modern  neswpaperdom,  reveals 
Arnold  Bennett  in  another  phase. 

POLITE  FARCES:     Three  Plays. 

Price  $1.00  Net 

The  three  farces  which  comprise  this  book  deal  with  possible 
domestic  and  refined  crises  of  everyday  life. 

THE  HONEYMOON: 

A  Comedy  in  Three  Acts.  Price  $1.00  Net 

Originality  without  grotesquerie  and  satire  without  malice  com- 
bine to  make  a  play  that  is  full  of  sparkle  and  genuine  charm. 

THE  GREAT  ADVENTURE: 

A  Play  of  Fancy  in  Four  Acts.  Price  $1.00  Net 

The  play  based  on  Mr.  Bennett's  successful  novel,  "Buried 
Alive."  As  the  novel  stands  out  among  humorous  fiction  so  THE 
GREAT  ADVENTURE  stands  out  among  modern  comedies. 

ARNOLD  BENNETT  AND  EDWARD  KNOBLAUCH 

MILESTONES: 

A  Play  in  Three  Acts.  Price  $1.00  Net 

This  is  the  play  which  has  created  a  sensation  because  of  its 

boldness  and  novelty.     It  passes,  in  rapid  survey,  three  generations — 

the  milestones  of  the  last  half  century.     A  big  New  York  success. 

GEORGE    H.    DORAN     COMPANY,     Publishers 


THIS  BOOK  IS  DUE  ON  THE  LAST  DATE 
STAMPED  BELOW 


AN     INITIAL     FINE     OF     25     CENTS 

WILL  BE  ASSESSED  FOR  FAILURE  TO  RETURN 
THIS  BOOK  ON  THE  DATE  DUE.  THE  PENALTY 
WILL  INCREASE  TO  50  CENTS  ON  THE  FOURTH 
DAY  AND  TO  $1.00  ON  THE  SEVENTH  DAY 
OVERDUE. 


OCT     13 1932 

NOV     1    1333 


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UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA  LIBRARY 


